We have big box stores for pets.
We have semi trucks burning diesel to bring pet food and pet supplies to all parts of the world.
We devote some amount of farm land and livestock to feeding those pets.
It’s interesting when people suggest to reduce global human population but I have never heard anyone suggest to reduce pet populations as a method for combating climate change or for simply reducing resource usage.
The worldwide dog population is estimated to be 900 million.
There are 600 million to 1 billion cats living in the world today.
I’m sure there is a noticable carbon footprint regarding pets, but it pales in comparison to other industries. The entire pet market was
0.005%0.5% of the US GDP in 2022, which includes veterinary services. So yeah, while there probably is some carbon reduction we could do with in the pet world, our efforts are better directed elsewhere.Also, good luck getting people to give up Waffles and Spunky. If anything, they improve our world via people’s quality of life.
Yeah, my dog takes like 6 months to eat a giant bag of dog food, it’s not contributing in any meaningful way to climate change.
Pretty sure OP is mad people talk about how the beef/pork industry actual.is contributing.
The figure is off by two decimal places. 136 billion is about .5% of 25.6 trillion.
Shit, right you are. Edited, thanks.
And if Sir Chauncey Barksalot kills enough infants, his carbon pawprint will be negative.
I think quality of life is an important point. I know it’s selfish / narcissistic of me, but the main reason to stop climatic crisis is to improve people’s quality of life. The planet will keep turning and life will survive in some form, despite our best efforts. The rest of the solar system, galaxy, universe, won’t even notice. But humans on earth will notice. And if we are destroying quality of life to stop the climate crisis, what’s the point?
(Of course, changes are needed and some quality of life will be lost for the net gain of not dying slowly in an uninhabitable world, but I feel like the companionship of pets is a big deal to some people but a very small cost climate-wise)
This is a valid unpopular opinion too, you could have made your own post.
I’m against it though because I think it would be worth adapting to a simpler lifestyle if everyone agreed to ditch the idea of profit and infinite growth and focused on the problem at hand.
People could even keep their pets lol.
quality of life is a big one… you can get people to change their ways only a certain amount, and if you get people to give up pets they’re gonna tell you where to shove your impactful changes