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0 points112358132134556y ago0 comments

> Pets are doing us a favor by eating all these things that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution involved

Seriously, just the fact of making their food, the food containers/packages (aluminium, plastics or whatever, not talking about the further recycling environmental costs), end-to-end delivery/transport, all of this has a massive impact, e.g. pets industry in US is $75b/year [1], those pet products and services are generating "a great deal of pollution"

Saying pets are environmental-friendly is dangerously wrong, above all in our current state

Pets are like a virtual human extra-population (1 billion in order of magnitude), given they are not wild animals participating in the ecosystem (when they are feral, they disrupt it [2]), nor farm animals. Their footprint is probably somewhere between 3% and 10% of the average person, that's still significant

You're definitely right about human having to reduce their meat consumption, their consumerism in general, pets included. That's the key to environment problems

[1]: https://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp

[2]: pets/'feral' pets impact on ecosystem https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-dog-is...

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triceratops6y ago

> Saying pets are environmental-friendly is dangerously wrong,

I didn't say that. They're just not as bad as you make them out to be.

> Pets are like a virtual human extra-population (1 billion in order of magnitude)...Their footprint is probably somewhere between 3% and 10% of the average person,

So like 30-100 million additional humans? You also didn't specify what country the "average person" is from, whose footprint you're comparing a pet to. Either way, it's not that big - barely 1.5% of the human population in terms of impact.

I can only think of two reasons why anyone would suggest "eliminate all the pets" as a serious solution for environmental problems:

1. They already hate pets. Which is a valid (if unpopular) personal opinion, but not a basis to formulate any sort of policy on.

2. They want to alienate people who might otherwise be on board with environmentalism. Because that's what will happen if you suggest to people they have to put Fido to sleep right now to save the planet.

11235813213455OP6y ago

> You also didn't specify what country the "average person" is from, whose footprint you're comparing a pet to. Either way, it's not that big - barely 1.5% of the human population in terms of impact.

speaking for "First-world" countries mostly. I live in France, there is as many pets as inhabitants roughly (63M-66M), figures say 21M of cats+dogs, other European countries are comparable. I compare pets footprint to their owners' basically, and a 10% larger footprint in developed countries is a problem, even 3%, even 1% is something to work on, there is always a start if we want to clean up the planet

About your 1. and 2.

Not specially, I could argue the exact opposite points in return, I'm just pragmatic about it. I'd also want to address the cigarette smoking problem more seriously (my mom died from that), to ban a bunch of cosmetics, all of insecticides, plastic wrappings... Pets seem like an easy lever to deal with, 'seem' because I understand your reaction, people get attached to them, they react with passion more than reason about it, but they must understand the consequences: ecosystem and pollution damages, neutering/spaying doesn't seem enforced in Brasil like showed my previous 'impact on ecosystem' link. Of course, we really can't put every pet owner in the same bag, I'm mostly targeting the way pets become a trend, a norm, e;g. the Shiba trend, the way pets have become so "normal", so present everywhere, internet, TV, young generation are kinda educated with that.. I mean, they wouldn't really question their existence later or their environment footprint, so I'm just here trying to have a critical, in a positive sense, view

"if you suggest to people they have to put Fido to sleep right now to save the planet."

I didn't say that either, I said "cut down"

You were right about arguing against my initial argument about "pets eating one fifth of the world's meat and fish" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#Impact] but I hope you understand all the other "invisible" pollution cost for processing, delivering those food, and all the other pets services pollution costs (vet, beauty, ...). So my point stands with their significant environmental impact, even if pets were fed insect-based food like they suggest in the wikipedia link, there would still be a significant background environmental impact

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