Thanks for killing the planet, dog owners. Well, that's a rough paraphrase of a New Zealand study that claims a medium-size dog leaves a larger ecological footprint than an SUV.
In Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, New Zealand-based architects Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog -including the amount of land needed to feed the animals that go into its food - give it about twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fuelling a Toyota Land Cruiser.
"We're just saying that we need to think about and know the [ecological] impact of some of the things we do and that we take for granted," says Robert Vale.
Noting that a cat's paw-print was roughly equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf's, New Scientist magazine asked an environmentalist at the Stockholm Environment Institute to calculate animals' environmental impact, and reported that "his figures tallied almost exactly".
The study apparently didn't take into account the emissions of either an SUV or dogs.
"If you look at a large-sized dog, they can live 10 to 14 years, and it certainly wouldn't surprise me," Don Jordan, director of the Seattle Animal Shelter and president of the Washington State Federation of Animal Care and Control Agencies, says of the study. "There's a lot that goes into manufacturing and producing food to care for dogs during the course of a life."
The book's title, and suggestion that pets may be usefully "recycled" by being eaten by their owners or turned into pet food when they die, may be offputting, but Vale says the question is valid given the planet's growing population and finite resources.
"Issues about sustainability are increasingly becoming things that are going to require us to make choices as difficult as eating your dog," he says. "It's not just about changing your light bulbs or taking a cloth bag to the supermarket.
"It's about much more challenging and difficult issues. Once you see where [cats and dogs] fit in your overall balance of things, you might decide to have the cat but not also to have the two cars and the three bathrooms and be a meat-eater yourself."
Short of eating dogs, what should be done about these four-legged eco-Hummers before they kill us all?
"If, in fact, this is true, I would think that pet owners would look at the manufacturing process for the items they're buying for their dogs. I've seen every year the boutique shops for dogs start to sprout up, whether it be bakers or clothing stores or treats," Jordan says.
Clark Williams-Derry, chief researcher at the Sightline Institute, a non-profit sustainability think-tank in Seattle, scoffs at the study.
"When I saw the study I ran some quick numbers," he says. "The average dog has to eat at least twice as much as the average person for this to be right. People are just heavier than dogs, so I just had to scratch my head at that. It doesn't mean dogs don't have a big impact. But I view it with a healthy dose of scepticism."
At the Bullitt Foundation, which is devoted to environmental preservation, Steve Whitney says: "I guess in a perfect world, the real cost of our consumer products would be reflected in the price we pay and our decision about our pets and health would also reflect the cost so we could make rational decisions about it. I suspect benefits derived from companionship of our animals, while difficult to quantify, would also be part of the equation."
McClatchy-Tribune; Reuters
