Home » Politics

Should we stop at pit bulls?

14 January 2010 RS 5 Comments

It's a cold January It's a cold January (Photo by The Elginite).

This is an article from December that I didn’t get a chance to link to. It’s about banning pets to reduce our carbon footprint and thereby thwart global warming. We discussed banning/regulating pit bulls in Elgin before, but why don’t we discuss banning pets altogether? They are extremely bad for the planet:

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.

Combine the land required to generate its food and a “medium” sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) — around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4×4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.

“Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat,” Barrett said.
Other animals aren’t much better for the environment, the Vales say.

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

Perhaps the members of the global warming group in Elgin will be the first to make the personal sacrifices necessary to save the planet. Elgin certainly could put itself on the map as the greenest city in America if it enacted an outright ban on pet ownership. What do you think?

Sure it’s been a cold January but I wouldn’t put too much weight on that. The cold spell might last twenty or thirty years but that’s just a blip on the hockey graph.

Possibly related posts:

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars
Loading ... Loading ...

5 Responses to “Should we stop at pit bulls?”

You can subscribe to these comments via RSS.

  1. Common Sense Clarence Hayward says:

    MY toy poodle named Marci is like a member of our family with a personality all her own. I won’t give her up.

    God put animals on earth for man’s enjoyment.

  2. jessica says:

    yeah, mass suicide would be good for the environment. then again, i don’t think the elgin ecco group is in the practice of telling people what to do.

  3. Paul says:

    “i don’t think the elgin ecco group is in the practice of telling people what to do.”

    Wow! SO being part and parcel of the Green Fascism that advocates laws effecting virtually everything people do and how they do it, isn’t telling people what to do?

    And speaking of not making sense - didn’t you just get through attacking me, without providing any basis for your attack, in the thread where I criticised ecco group Kaptain for telling Walmart what to do as far as being more “green”? Yeah, you did.

    • jessica says:

      are you familiar with ecco? they hand out free cfl lightbulbs and host fundraisers encouraging people to use rain barrels. if that’s fascism then i guess everything’s fascism in your eyes eh?

  4. Anymouse says:

    I don’t think everybody got the sarcasm in your blog. At least, I hope you were being sarcastic.

Leave your response!

Log in now or register (not required to post a comment).

Comment Policy: Be civil. Be truthful. Pick one name and stick with it.

If you know XHTML, you can use these tags: <a> <b> <blockquote> <cite> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>