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Thanks
for killing the planet, dog owners.
Well,
that's a rough paraphrase of a
New Zealand
study that claims a medium-size dog leaves a larger
ecological footprint than an SUV.
In
"Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable
Living," authors
Robert and Brenda Vale
argue that resources required to feed a dog —
including the amount of land needed to feed the animals
that go into its food — give it about twice the
eco-footprint of, say, building and fueling a Toyota
Land Cruiser. Noting that a cat's pawprint was roughly
equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf's, "New
Scientist" (www.newscientist.com)
asked an environmentalist at the
Stockholm Environment Institute
in
York, U.K.
, to independently calculate animals' environmental
impact, and reported that "his figures tallied
almost exactly." The study apparently didn't take
into account the emissions of either the SUV or the
dogs.
"If
you look at a large-size dog, they can live 10-14 years,
and it certainly wouldn't surprise me,"
Don Jordan
, director of the
Seattle Animal Shelter
and President of the
Washington State Federation of Animal Care and Control
Agencies
, said of the study. "There's a lot that goes into
manufacturing and producing food to care for dogs during
the course of a life."
Short of
eating the dogs, what should be done about these
four-legged eco-Hummers before they kill us all?
"If,
in fact, this is true ... I would think that pet owners
would look at the manufacturing process for the items
they're buying for their dogs. I've seen every year the
boutique shops for dogs start to sprout up, whether it
be bakers or clothing stores or treats or stuff,"
Jordan said.
Seattle
Mayor
Greg Nickels'
spokesman
Alex Fryer
somehow appeared not to find the matter urgent. "We
never answer a hypothetical," he said.
Candidate
Mike McGinn
didn't respond to a
Seattle Times
query.
Joe Mallahan's
spokeswoman,
Charla Neuman
— who owns two St. Bernards — refused to relay
questions on the topic to Mallahan.
"Thank
god this wasn't paid for by taxpayer dollars,"
Neuman said of the
New Zealand
study, while spinning the matter thusly: "Take the
combination of Joe having a small dog and driving a
Prius, and he'll be a very green mayor."
Clark Williams-Derry
, chief researcher at the
Sightline Institute
, a nonprofit sustainability think-tank in
Seattle
, scoffed at the study, which is how scientists express
disdain.
"When
I saw the study I ran some quick numbers,"
Williams-Derry said. "The average dog has to eat at
least twice as much as the average person for this to be
right. People are just heavier than dogs so, I just had
to scratch my head at that.
"It
doesn't mean dogs don't have a big impact," he
noted. "But I view it with a healthy dose of
skepticism."
At
The Bullitt Foundation
, which is devoted to environmental preservation,
Steve Whitney
said, "I guess in a perfect world the real cost of
our consumer products would be reflected in the price we
pay and our decision about our pets and health would
also reflect the cost so we could make rational
decisions about it. I suspect benefits derived from
companionship of our animals, while difficult to
quantify, would also be part of the equation."
Also
scoffing to some difficult-to-quantify degree, Whitney
said that if one were to really tackle the eco-footprint
problem, "I don't think dog ownership would be the
place to start."
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