Should we stop at pit bulls?
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.
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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.
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.
“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.
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?
I don’t think everybody got the sarcasm in your blog. At least, I hope you were being sarcastic.
Don’t judge the breed when you have probably never been around one. I have had pits for 30 years. My grand children and greatgrand child has baeen raised with them. They are very people tolerant and very loving. If you see a vicious one you need to look at the owners. If you are abused you will not be a very nice person either. If I have a right to carry a gun I definitely have the right to choose the pet I want to live on my property that is bought and paid for and taxes paid. Take time to get to know something instead of hating with no knowledge.
You do NOT have the right to carry a gun in Illinois. You have the right to OWN one. The perfect world would include you owning any dog you want to. If your dog bites, attacks or kills another person’s pet or a human being without be provoked, you or the consenting adult in charge of your dog is arrested with a 50K bond and your dog is held at your expense. If found guilty, you are sentenced to minimum 6 months in jail with no probation and your dog is sentenced to death. Can you live with that or is that against your rights? THAT’S how I would “look at the owner”. I can hate the owner AND his dog this way.