Climate Change - Household Pets are a bigger problem than you may imagine.

[Ron Ron Ron]

There was an interesting piece on the radio yesterday, where a couple of climate scientists were talking about the high contribution that domestic pets, particularly cats and dogs, make to CO2 and global warming.

Pet food production and processing is responsible for a large percentage of our pet’s detrimental effort on the planet, but the animals themselves make their own negative contribution.

Basically, it’s roughly on a par with emissions from commercial aviation.

 

[Nearholmer]

39 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Basically, it’s roughly on a par with emissions from commercial aviation.

 

Hmmmmm ............ this "research" wasn't sponsored by the air-travel industry by any chance, was it?

 

I'd love to see how the comparison was done, because there are so many things that could be included, or excluded, in each side of the equation. "Commercial aviation" often factors-in no more than planes flying, neglecting all the ground activity, materials, transport to and from airports, etc etc, for instance. 

 

I'm not contending that pets don't create environmental harm, they obviously must, I'm just curious.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Daddyman]

All those people turning lights on in the middle of the night to see what the hell's up with the cat this time will presumably create quite a carbon footprint. 

 

[J. S. Bach]

The real problem is not pets, aviation, military, it is human beings; get rid of them and the earth will no longer have any problems.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Basically, it’s roughly on a par with emissions from commercial aviation.

More CO2 is likely emitted by power generation for the electricity lost in transmission (3.6% of global CO2)* than commercial aviation (2.8%).

 

* A bit of a 'back of the envelope calculation' based on numbers here.

 

CO2 from transmission loss is 989 Mt which is 1.4 X the 681 Mt for shipping. Shipping is often stated at 10.6% of total transportation CO2 which in turn is 24% of global CO2. Commercial aviation is 11.6% of transportation CO2.

 

Of course it's true that every little bit adds up, but there are many bigger offenders than commercial aviation.

[Nick C]

2 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

There was an interesting piece on the radio yesterday, where a couple of climate scientists were talking about the high contribution that domestic pets, particularly cats and dogs, make to CO2 and global warming.

Pet food production and processing is responsible for a large percentage of our pet’s detrimental effort on the planet, but the animals themselves make their own negative contribution.

Basically, it’s roughly on a par with emissions from commercial aviation.

 

Were they climate scientists, or "climate scientists"? While I'll agree that processed pet food will certainly have an impact, it'll be tiny compared to ours, and as for their own contribution, are they really suggesting that cat farts are destroying the planet?

 

That's before you start discussing the positive benefits of pets to mental health and wellbeing. 

 

Please provide a link to a proper peer reviewed scientific study.

[Nearholmer]

10 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Of course it's true that every little bit adds up, but there are many bigger offenders than commercial aviation.

 

True in some ways, but I think the reason that aviation comes in for a kicking is that so much air travel is more or less optional, undertaken purely for pleasure. Which is true of keeping pets too, of course, although I'd wager that if the emissions from pet owning were divided by the number of pet owners globally it would be smaller than the emissions from flying divided by the number of people who fly globally.

[Ron Ron Ron]

The topic was focused on domestic pets.
The  climate scientists interviewed made no direct reference to commercial aviation as a comparison, but that area was briefly mentioned in a list of areas of concern (agriculture, transport etc).

So they weren’t excusing aviation or anything like that.

The figures they gave for domestic pets as a percentage of total global CO2 made the comparison obvious.

 

A quick look shows there’s various bits of research and data available online, but I haven’t had time to go back and read it yet.

 

 

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['CHARD]

Were this true, we could no doubt sort it out with a drive to cut our own consumption of meat, but clearly that's far too impalatable to the general public. 

[Dungrange]

Well, if we wanted to cut transport emissions, we could always get the government to introduce a marketing campaign to encourage us to "stay at home, stay local and if we have to go on holiday, do so in the UK"!!! ;-)

 

I have to say that I'm surprised that pets would have such a high impact, but as @Nearholmer says, it depends on what is included in the calculation (and what's left out when determining the impacts of other sectors).  Electric trains are so much more environmentally friendly than diesel trains if you ignore the emissions from the power sector and the transmission losses on the distribution network. :-)

 

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by Dungrange

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

The figures they gave for domestic pets as a percentage of total global CO2 made the comparison obvious.

What number did they quote? I am assuming something in the vicinity of 2%, which for the whole food chain of pet food might be plausible - though do the cereals used in pet food factor in as an offset, since they consume CO2 and produce carbon-based plants?

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I'd wager that if the emissions from pet owning were divided by the number of pet owners globally it would be smaller than the emissions from flying divided by the number of people who fly globally

We'd have to actually do the maths. Pets are very much a "western" thing. Lots of caged birds in Asia.

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by Ozexpatriate

[Ray Von]

Bite me.

[J. S. Bach]

Note: NEVER say "Bite me." to a pit bull!

[Michael Hodgson]

I suspect the dog's emissions are to do with whatever the kids have been giving him to eat.   

[AndyID]

It all adds up but the equations are extremely complex. For example, one of the reasons we do not travel much is because we have a dog. If it wasn't for Shona our carbon footprint would likely be much greater because we'd be jetting all over the place.

 

[teaky]

With aviation, the fact that greenhouse gases are emitted at the altitude where they have the most impact also needs to be considered.

 

With pets (specifically dogs) one also has to include the energy and hydrocarbons used to make all the bags for hanging sh1t in trees.

[Ben B]

11 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

The real problem is not pets, aviation, military, it is human beings; get rid of them and the earth will no longer have any problems.

 

I broadly agree, but it depends how we go.  We need to die out in a relatively slow and organised fashion rather than say by a nuclear war or viral apocalypse.  Taking time to switch off all the atomic power stations, chemical plants, and so on, that would up the planet anyway without us, even if we were all raptured into the hereafter in one tidy go.  There's an excellent book called "The World Without Us" which goes into detail, looking at the point at which say an unsupervised refinery in Texas rusts to the point of dumping millions of gallons of oil into the environment, or when a power station shuts down, floods, and dumps all its radiation out without maintenance.  Given human selfishness, I doubt the last men alive will waste time making the place nice for the rabbits, deer, and sparrows that will out-survive us.

 

Sorry, thread drift and doomsday on a Friday morning!  Must try and think about something flippant instead, like cats secretly being behind the global climate crisis all along

[MarkC]

11 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

More CO2 is likely emitted by power generation for the electricity lost in transmission (3.6% of global CO2)* than commercial aviation (2.8%).

 

* A bit of a 'back of the envelope calculation' based on numbers here.

 

CO2 from transmission loss is 989 Mt which is 1.4 X the 681 Mt for shipping. Shipping is often stated at 10.6% of total transportation CO2 which in turn is 24% of global CO2. Commercial aviation is 11.6% of transportation CO2.

 

Of course it's true that every little bit adds up, but there are many bigger offenders than commercial aviation.

OK, I'll bite.

 

Shipping is the most fuel-efficient form of mechanically & fossil-fuelled powered transport going. 90% of goods is transported by water at some point, according to many well-regarded sources. Stop shipping & your accepted way of life would change dramatically. Perhaps cutting back on Chinese tat might help though, in fuel required for raw material transit, production and movement of the finished article - which would of course, in an attempt to keep vaguely on topic - include many pet toys...

 

Mark

[Ron Ron Ron]

From the Ecologist magazine.

 

Pet owners know there's no bond like the one between you and your dog or cat.

They're there for you whenever you need them, whether it's to cuddle, go on a walk or make you laugh.

But, just like humans leave an impact on the environment, so do our pets.

 

Dogs and cats both eat meat-heavy diets, meaning they contribute to the consumption of animal products, the meat farming industry and all the pollutions, toxins and other emissions that it creates.

Since our pets need the nutrients in animal products in order to have a healthy diet, finding a way to minimize their impact on the environment proves challenging.

 

.......UCLA geography professor, Gregory Okin, conducted research on the environmental impact of America's pets.
He found that dogs and cats in US households create about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide and methane annually, which is the equivalent of the climate impact that 13.6 million cars create in a year.

 

Okin also learned that America's pets consume about 19% of the number of calories as American people do in a year, which is the equivalent of the number of calories the entire population of France will consume in a year.

 

That's right — our pets' caloric intake adds up to that of an entire country, and a rather populated country at that.

In fact, if we took all our pets and made them their own country, they'd rank fifth in meat consumption, following only Brazil, Russia, China and the U.S.

On top of that, since dogs and cats consume more meat than the average human, our pets consume around 25 percent of the total calories derived from animal products in the country.

 

And, of course, what goes in must come back out — American pets are responsible for leaving behind about 5.1 million tons of feces each year, about the same as 90 million humans.

 

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

From the Independent newspaper, 8th Feb. 2021

 

By owning a pet, you are doing more damage to the environment than you might realise

Truth-telling about pets can be a painful process but cats and dogs, particularly, are having a devastating impact on the planet

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

A piece in the Guardian referenced a revealing book on the subject and also noted this from New Scientist....

 

The New Scientist, in a recent editorial entitled "Cute, fluffy and horribly greedy", largely agreed with the book's findings that some pets, due to the food they eat, have a surprisingly high "ecological footprint" (a way of quantifying human demand on the planet's ecosystems using a measure called "global hectares").

 

"According to the authors . . . it takes 0.84 hectares [2.07 acres] of land to keep a medium-sized dog fed.

In contrast, running a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser, including the energy required to construct the thing and drive it 10,000km a year, requires 0.41 hectares.

 

Dogs are not the only environmental sinners. The eco-footprint of a cat equates to that of a Volkswagen Golf.

If that's troubling, there is an even more shocking comparison. In 2004, the average citizen of Vietnam had an ecological footprint of 0.76 hectares. For an Ethiopian, it was just 0.67 hectares.

In a world where scarce resources are already hogged by the rich, can we really justify keeping pets that take more than some people?"

 

 

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[F-UnitMad]

14 hours ago, Ray Von said:

Bite me.

 

14 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Note: NEVER say "Bite me." to a pit bull!

As my wife is a friend of the family who's mother was recently mauled to death by two pit bulls in Rowley Regis, these comments aren't anywhere close to being 'funny'. 

Edited April 23, 2021 by F-UnitMad
Spelling

[AndrueC]

Depends on the pet. My dearly departed budgerigar , Beekle, only required someone to pick the seeds and transport them. He wasn't a big eater

 

 

 

[Ron Ron Ron]

I think it’s pretty obvious as the profile of this issue is raised in public awareness, there will be a lot of denial and resistance to accepting there is a serious problem. More serious than most people, with or without pets, have realised.

 

 

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