Pawprint special
Brace up, you’re about to get angry
IRINA SLAV
Did you know that “One of the most climate intensive decisions we make is whether to own a pet. It’s for the same reason that humans have a big impact: They eat every day. And most of them eat meat. The environmental impact of meat includes the land the animal lived on, the food it ate, the waste it generated and other factors”?
I wasn’t aware of that until this week, when I came across the aforequoted AP article, whose author claims, and quotes other people’s claims, that we need to reduce the “carbon pawprint” of the animals that we choose to share our lives with for reasons other than using them for food or defence.
Carnivorous pets, the article, and many before it, argue, are responsible for huge amounts of CO2 emissions because of what they eat. In case anyone’s interested in the specifics, the average feline killing machine emits around 310 kg of CO2 annually, an average dog is responsible for 770 kg of CO2 annually, and a large dog generates a humongously enormous 2,500 kg of the ultimate killer gas that is destroying the planet as I write this and generate my very own tonnes of said killer gas.
For the specifics connoisseurs and because it’s a beautiful rainy day here and I’m in a generous mood, here’s a paper from 2017, authored by a geography professor from UCLA, who found that “meat-eating by dogs and cats creates the equivalent of about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, which has about the same climate impact as a year’s worth of driving from 13.6 million cars.” If this doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, there’s something wrong with you and you need to do something about it.
Since 2017, thing have got worse, too, because, I was fascinated to learn, pet food manufacturers are trying to make cat and dog food more similar to our food, meaning less offal and suchlike, and more actual meat in the cans. This, we learn from the AP story, is a very, very bad thing — with which I agree partly.
The logic is pretty simple: if cat and dog food is made mostly of offal and other leftovers from meat processing for humans, there is less meat waste, which is always a good thing and cats and dogs still eat healthily (supplementing their diet with the random insect, because they really don’t care where they get their protein from). But start making cat and dog food from steak and prime rib, and you turn into a climate criminal by prompting an increase in meat production, which is, as we know, devastating for the planet because it takes the equivalent of Alaska to grow the grain to feed the cows and chickens to feed the cats and dogs. Or something. Just random speculation because that’s the kind of times we live in.
Anyway, besides sticking to cheap food, we can do better by turning our cats and dogs into vegans, according to one “researcher specialising in the pet food protein transition”, who the author of that article from the lead interviewed, and who focuses on “research related to pet diets, with a focus on the environmental impacts of meat-based and vegan pet foods.” Oh, and incidentally, he works for a company that — you’d never guess — produces vegan pet food and I sincerely hope Hell is real. Funnily enough, neither the author of the AP article nor her editors found it necessary to mention the fact but X community note writers did.
Apparently, says one vet who the AP also interviewed for its story, “Dogs can get plenty of protein and the right balance of protein without actually ingesting any meat.” The vet in question works at Cornell University, does not have any publicly listed affiliations of the kind that the above researcher has and yet she believes dogs can be perfectly healthy while vegan.
The inconvenient question this raises, however, is just how much rainforest we’d have to destroy to clear land for the grains that vegan dogs would have to eat to get all the protein they need to remain healthy. I mean, it’s all about energy density, of which vegan foods have less than animal foods, much as it breaks my aspiring vegan heart to admit it.
Cats, alas, cannot go vegan. Or can they? Per that vet from above, as paraphrased by the AP in that very same sponsored content I’ve been quoting all day, beef is the worst offender, but we already knew that, and “Chicken and fish are lower-impact, and plant-based options pollute the least.” I thought plant-based was vegan but I must have been wrong.
Now, as COP30 begins, spare a moment to reconsider your pet choices for the good of the planet. Ask yourselves, if you have any cats or dogs, do you really need them? After all, to quote the sustainability director of something called the Pet Sustainability Coalition, which is as authoritative as it sounds, “What else do pets do? We have to feed them. I think that that’s why it’s [food] number one.”
If you, like me, wondered “Number one what?”, I assume she meant the number one problem with those good for nothings we call pets and treat like members of the family. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go feed the family planet killer and then I’ll go buy a couple of Maine Coons, a Newfoundland, and a Great Dane.
P.S. I asked Vlad what he thinks of the whole emissions thing. This is what he said:
This article (Pawprint special) was created and published by Irina Slav and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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