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 would if there weren’t 100 better places to start first.
Also, it’s probably too late to make enough difference short of rewriting how modern civilization works.
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
There’s always gonna be “a better place to start first”, no matter what the suggestion is. That’s a popular delaying tactic, and it’s part of the problem. At least this is something we can control ourselves, instead of waiting for governments/corporations to act.
Calls for individualized actions on smaller contributors to climate change is the stalling tactic. Oils companies popularized the idea of personal carbon footprint as a way to steer attention away from their larger role in climate change. Instead of organizing to end fossil fuel use, create infrastructure to reduce our dependence on cars, or cutting back on the US war machine, people instead focus on changing their spending habits in minor ways that won’t fix anything but will give them catharsis and social capital. And for people who are even less committed to climate action, they see people pushing for these kind of things and they just see people telling you to give up stuff you like or even depend on for no reason.
Climate change is an emergency that we’re running out of time to fix. We need massive, society wide changes if we’re going to avoid catastrophe. Little incremental changes are not only insufficient to solve the problem, they reduce the political will needed to make the necessary changes.
Yeah, this is something that I just can’t understand why a human would ask something like this. Pets help people exist. They make people happy. There are things we should do to reduce pet related things, like a lot of breeding programs. But I’m looking at this similar to someone saying “we should reduce the amount of vegetables we eat because harvesting them causes the climate damage.”
I dunno man. I think I’ll start by wearing a condom, rather than curb stomping puppies.
Self extinguishing bloodlines are interesting.
Eh, intelligent people have always had fewer kids.
It’s nothing new.
not more intelligent, more educated. there is a distinction.
Why start on something useful and realistic, like reducing car use, but instead let’s look at pet owners.
This is the stupidest fossil lobby effort to blaming everyone else instead themselves.
I don’t have pets or kids and I rarely drive or fly.
I do as best I can to minimise my “carbon footprint” despite knowing it’s a concept dreamed up by BP’s PR team to shift the attention away from the industries responsible.
I used to try to suggest others do similar but at this point it’s likely too late. And you propose I go around telling my friends and family to take their pets out back as a starting point? I’d laugh if the naivety wasn’t so tragic.
at this point I think the biggest single CO2 source from me is my electricity usage, and I have no direct control over my electricity source. it’s not like I can call up the utility company and tell them to only send solar, wind, and nuclear power to my house.
OP isn’t suggesting killing pets, and I’m sure not, so I don’t know where you’re getting that dramatic, emotional idea from. Since you don’t have any pets, and you’re already trying to reduce your impact on the environment, we all appreciate your efforts!
If anyone is thinking about buying a pet, though, think twice. Things may seem okay for now, but humanity is going to have to live MUCH more efficiently in order to survive.
Please explain how you envisage this idea making the slightest bit of difference in time without a pet cull lol.
Do I really have to explain that if people own fewer pets, there will be less demand for pet related products?
I’m done wasting my time on this.
Lol I think you severely overestimate the amount of time we have to change things.
You want to educate the populace that they should not buy a pet when their current one dies? So, in an optimistic scenario, in 10 years time you think what 10% of the entire population might have listened to you? Meanwhile we’ll be well on our way to the planet becoming unlivable.
I’m done wasting my time on this.
Same.
refraining from downvoting because this is an actual unpopular opinion (it is incredibly stupid, good job)
Upvoted, because this is an incredibly unpopular opinion.
resisting the urge to down vote after seeing the community
you’re a rare Lemmite. Hats off to you.
Realistically we need an equivalent to the ttenth dentist where we upvote if we disagree.
Most pet food is made from the unwanted scraps/guts left over from processing human food. There are not additional pet food farms - they’re the same farms. Where will the guts go if pets don’t eat it? Cheaper fast food, probably, i.e. more fast food, or waste.
I don’t know that this would reduce anything - just move resources around and probably have other effects that you and I aren’t imagining.
Cats and dogs do require meat to live, unlike humans. Reducing the meat industry will drive up pet food prices, and that may reduce pet ownership. But we better fucking make sure pets are spayed and neutered - doubly so if that ever happens.
I’ve got zero kids and two dogs. The carbon footprint definitely tips in favor of my dogs.
I’m not driving the dogs to school and soccer practice every day, sitting in traffic, nor buying them new clothes every year. I don’t feel the need to buy a small bus-sized SUV to give my King Kong sized baby room to play.
We have semi trucks burning diesel to bring baby food, diapers, cribs, etc to all parts of the world. We devote some of the best produce to make baby food and create a shit load of plastic waste with bottles and other assorted baby paraphernalia. Don’t even get me started on disposable diapers.
I say keep the pets, ban the kids. That’ll definitely address climate change within a generation.
Or, we could hold accountable the handful of large companies producing the bulk of the emissions because all of our individual emissions combined are but a drop in the bucket.
/s if not obvious (except the part about holding polluting companies accountable - we should definitely do that)
I’m not driving the dogs to school and soccer practice every day, sitting in traffic, nor buying them new clothes every year.
You’re a monster.
Same here. We have no kids and 2 dogs. We can eat bacon every day and not even come close to the load child families create not to mention long term!
They’ve studied this. IIRC 3 medium sized dogs equals one kid, adjusted to be per year. So you’re almost there!
But my dogs may live 10-12 years and won’t have puppies. The line (and pollution) stops there. Whereas kids will make even more kids and keep increasing the total consumption
Yes that was adjusted to be per year because dogs don’t live as long. After that depends on the existence of either a dog or child, which depends on the demand for dogs for that part of the equation, and is still 3 to 1 at present time.
Do you have a link to that research? I can’t see how this can be true in the larger picture. I will stop having dogs when I die but children will crow up, and have children of their own who also will do the same.
Me having pets instead of children puts a stop to that chain of placing consumers into the world and stopping such a strain, must be worth much more
Sigh. The study was not about children having children which is a different matter entirely. That’s a different choice, by different people, and no they won’t necessarily have children just like (shock) you were a child once and decided not to have children. It’s about ownership of pets, adjusted to per year because yes pets don’t live as long. Jfc. This seems like you don’t like the result so you’re trying to get out of it. Chow.
They’re also asking for a source, which you’re failing to provide.
No - I’m simply stating that not having children is better for the environment than having pets especially in the long run (as I mentioned in my original comment). What I am arguing is that not having children sets a definite stop to a growing and (potentially) continually branching line of consumers and poluters. I am not looking at the comparison simply here and now, but as a whole and as a long term effect
I think we are comparing two slightly different things and thisbis why I wanted to compare what you are refering to, with what I was trying to explain
Yeah there’s a lot of ways to reduce carbon emissions. The important thing is to choose the ways that fits your life the best. It’s all about making an effort and not about some kind of purity test.
I mean everything you have and everything you do is putting carbon into the air. Literally breathing puts carbon in the air.
But we probably should be prioritizing here. Could go crazy thinking of every activity that produces carbon. Take transit, have a plant burger. Most important thing is that everyone makes an effort rather than having a small number of people taking extreme steps to reduce only their own carbon emissions while looking like nutjobs to everyone else.
Sure if you don’t feel like you need a pet, then don’t have one. It helps. If you already have four cats, then you really don’t need to get a fifth cat. Like come on, Janet, you already have enough cats FFS.
But no, nobody should suggest reducing the pet population as part of a carbon reduction plan. That just makes it all sound oppressive and crazy and will be rejected by a majority of the people. That will result in people not doing anything to reduce carbon emissions, which has a net negative result.
It’s good to think in this kind of way though. But it’s better to go with “take public transit, maybe try a plant burger, and think of other ways to reduce carbon emissions!” And let people reach the conclusion themselves about whether or not they need another pet.
Yeah, that’s the problem.
Dude, that’s the depth of your thinking? Come on! You know that my post title does not suggest that doing something fixes everything.
I agree! We both recognize that there are larger, more systemic problems that should take priority on climate change.
So? We suggest going vegan. Over 300 billion animals are raised and slaughtered every year. Pets account for such a small part of the environmental impact.
Trying to be as neutral and objective about this idea as I can:
People who own pets are very emotionally attached to them. Even if pet ownership was the #1 contributing factor to climate change, it would still take an extremely terrible climate for the majority of pet owners to be willing to live without their pets.
If you were to try to introduce some legislation to make this happen, I think that at a minimum and currently owned pets would have to be grandfathered in.
A bit off topic, I have heard some calls to make it mandatory that all pet cats would have to be indoor cats, due to their predation of certain species
My favorite part of this unpopular opinion is just how far you could go with “reduce human population” before you get to the level of unpopular this opinion is. Assuming it ever gets that far.
Birth caps? Fine. Kind of works in an ideal world I guess
Neutering people? Eh… I get it, not for me but I get it.
Death camps? Ok, no, but like Thanos did have a point…
No more dogs or cats? That sir is a bridge too far!
We don’t need birth caps or forced sterilization or any of that. We need comprehensive sexual health education and universal access to all birth control methods including abortion. Imagine a society where the only babies born were ones that were planned for and wanted.
As for the pet thing… I’d love to see legislation that prevented breeding for profit.
If you want pet breeds you need to breed them.
Some people do actually still need a working dog as well.Do puppymills still exist? Somehow targeting that explicitly would probably be good.
This is just the fallacy of individual reponsibility dressed up to focus on one minor contributor.
So you’re saying the oil industry is going to push this next?
Somebody get voyajer a promotion!
First up the three biggest CO2 producers are planes shipping and cars. And by a long shot. I agree that there are some corrupt activists the ones that are really trying to make a change are promoting non car centric infrastructure.
Planes and shipping are ‘only’ about 2% each, they’re far from the biggest polluters. For the big polluters you’ve got road transport, agriculture and industry etc…
banning non ZEV cars and trucks, nationalizing, improving, and electrifying the rail network, and shifting all the highway widening money to protected bike lanes and public transit would do a lot and none of it is individual scale
Hey OP, I think you’re focusing on specific use cases of broader issues.
Globally speaking, energy is about 25% of all CO₂ emitted into the air. Farming and agriculture is another 25%. Industry is 20% and transportation is about 15%. So in just those four categories we’re talking about 85% of all CO₂ emitted.
So when you indicate:
We have semi trucks burning diesel to bring pet food and pet supplies to all parts of the world.
That’s transportation.
We devote some amount of farm land and livestock to feeding those pets
That’s farming.
We have big box stores for pets
That’s both energy (for power) and industry (concrete).
So I just wanted to point that out. Now I also wanted to address something else.
It’s interesting when people suggest to reduce global human population
Rich people suggest this and poor people think it sounds good because they believe that the reduction is not including themselves. We have a TON of resources on this planet. We just do not have enough resources on this planet for the current distribution system. That’s the key point here.
Population reduction should be viewed in the same manner on how humanity did the horse population reduction. The second we invented the car, horses were no longer useful, so we got rid of a ton of them. As we continue to progress in technology, we render a lot of people no longer useful through no fault of their own. So there’s a few folk out there recommending we do the same to them as we did horses.
Now where that lies on your ethical meter, you know, I’m not here to judge. Humanity is a spunky bunch. But just remember that the folks indicating population decline as a viable answer, if you’re not pulling eight or nine figures a year, you’re in that group up for consideration for culling.
But back to your point. I mean the pet thing is indeed an interesting take on the four factors of climate change. Indeed an interesting take on them for sure. I don’t have hard numbers on the CO₂ emissions for pet ownership, but they do indeed contribute to the big four. I cannot imagine that they account for a single percent of any of the big four’s underlying values. 900 million dogs do sound like a lot but it’s actually pretty small in terms of footprint on the environment. The big thing is that the vast majority of those dogs globally are not living high CO₂ producing lives. Just a few of them are. Same with cats. The vast majority are feral beasts. Wrecking diversity of various ecological areas for sure, but not exactly producing massive amounts of CO₂.
Which ecological impact is something that’s a different topic than climate change but the two do sometimes overlap each other. But they are two different studies at the end of the day.
It’s not a bad point but I’d love to see some data. I mean, what is my cats carbon footprint actually? I’m guessing it’s not that much compared to all the rest I could do to reduce my emissions. But I could be wrong.
