
Pet ownership is an overlooked driver of carbon emissions - prostoalex
https://www.axios.com/pets-dogs-cats-animals-environmental-impact-2a72f7b4-9d07-4007-8362-80c2b0ddc3f9.html
======
Razengan
I honestly cannot believe some of the things I read here.

In a recent post, airlines are burning thousands of gallons of fuels flying
empty planes in order to keep their “slots” and how organizations literally
destroy goods to keep their “use it or lose it” budgets:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22511488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22511488)

Then there’s other news about how tons of food is just thrown away every day,
or how presidential candidates are blowing millions of dollars on political
ads just for the heck of it.

Some people actually defend that kind of blatant waste, in the name of Mammon,
but you want to _tax pets?_

It’s bizarre how a small part of the population is so out of touch and so
_anti-human_.

In any case, why is it about taxing pets and not just taxing pet _food?_

------
strictnein
"Overlooked" except for the myriad of other articles that keep harping on
this.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/4/16094674/cats-dogs-meat-
di...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/4/16094674/cats-dogs-meat-diet-
greenhouse-gases-climate-change)

[https://www.dailywire.com/news/environmentalists-save-
world-...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/environmentalists-save-world-dump-
your-pets-emily-zanotti)

[https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-truth-about-cats-
and-...](https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-truth-about-cats-and-dogs-
environmental-impact)

------
dsmonk
If we stop making humans, wouldn't it automatically reduce the demand for
pets? Think about it. That infact may just be the truly viewed as an unalloyed
good.

------
jjtheblunt
Interesting assertion, less shallow than the article's premise, is that Guns,
Germs, and Steel (and other research) asserts pet ownership significantly
increases human immune response. Does that mean more humans consuming more
cattle, or less illness-driven carbon emissions? It's super complicated to
assess all the alternatives, I guess.

------
pdonis
"Owners can also feed their pets lower-quality proteins"

Huh? Why should I risk my pet's health?

~~~
throwawaywrench
I wouldnt assume that "quality protein" has any correlation with being
healthy.

>Owners can also feed their pets lower-quality proteins, as dogs and cats can
happily chow on meat byproducts, such as marrow, kidneys and spleen, left from
processing meat for humans.

Us humans don't choose what parts of animals we eat based on any kind of
health-centric metric. It just based on what parts we deem distasteful to eat.
So the bits that are deemed undesirable/low quality are not necessarily any
worse for the consumer. Some amount of organ meat may even be beneficial to
health. Arguably meat eating humans would do well to include some amount of
kidney, liver, marrow etc in place of some of the muscle tissue that we tend
to eat a lot of.

~~~
melq
I think you’re totally right in your assumption re: quality == healthy.
However, I really doubt the vague assertion of this article that implies
there’s a large population of pets being fed ‘high quality’ food.

There are many problems with modern industrial agriculture and mass produced
food, but efficiency is not one of them. There is very little waste in these
operations and those kidneys, livers, and marrow bones are already being put
to good use, whether its for human consumption or animal.

I won’t pretend to know what proportion of pets are fed standard, ‘low
quality’ food (ie. food made from corn, grain, and what most would consider as
low quality meats and byproducts) but if I had to guess I would wager its
>90%.

~~~
mrpopo
> There are many problems with modern industrial agriculture and mass produced
> food, but efficiency is not one of them. There is very little waste in these
> operations and those kidneys, livers, and marrow bones are already being put
> to good use, whether its for human consumption or animal.

Maybe modern industrial agriculture is efficient, but modern food consumption
isn't. Over a third of all available food is wasted in the USA. How much of
that food waste would be OK to be re-processed as pet food?

~~~
melq
I think this is a great point. I don’t know how the logistics of such a re-
processing would work, but food waste is certainly a major problem.

I don’t mean to sound like an apologist (or even a fan) of industrial
agriculture, but I think its important to acknowledge the reality that while
its an imperfect system, it is also a modern marvel that enables us as a
society to feed an enormous amount of people at extraordinarily low costs to
the consumer.

------
robocat
Get rid of the pets and we spend our money on other CO2 producing goods or
activities like travel.

The best generic metric for how much CO2 you produce is simply the amount you
spend, which is highly correlated with how much you earn.

Fixing that is hard...

------
thedance
Cats also kill billions of birds every year, way more than any number of
windmills or skyscrapers ever did. And they don’t do it for food, either. It’s
just because cats are jerks.

~~~
the8472
Should cat owners be held legally liable for the animal cruelty committed by
their pets?

~~~
Razengan
Should meat consumers be held legally liable for the animal cruelty committed
by the meat industry?

(I realize the effects of cats upon other animals, but your logic..)

~~~
the8472
The meat industry is operated by legally responsible humans. Pets on the other
hand are not legal entities, it seems logical that the liability would fall to
the owner.

~~~
Razengan
You didn’t answer why the meat industry shouldn’t be held liable for animal
cruelty.

~~~
the8472
You didn't ask that question. You asked whether consumers (not the meat
industry) should be be held liable.

But certainly, if the meat industry meets the bar of criminal animal cruelty
then I don't see why they shouldn't be held liable.

My initial comment was whether existing animal cruelty statutes should be
extended to cover pet owners instead of only direct actions by people,
assuming they don't already do so.

~~~
Razengan
You seem to be aware of cats committing animal cruelty but you're not sure if
the meat industry meets the bar of animal cruelty? What?

~~~
the8472
No, you asked whether it should be held liable. I answered that it should be
held liable, conditional on the legal process determining so. We can't just
decide that they should be held liable by mob vote, that's not how justice
works. Hence my answer: If A then B.

I made no statement wrt. my personal opinion whether A is true or not.

But even rolling with the argument for a moment that the meat industry meets
the bar and manages to evade the law anyway. That is no justification for
letting pets do the same. Two wrongs don't make a right and all that, so for
the purpose of this conversation that would seem like an unnecessary
deflection of responsibility by pet owners and the better answer is to improve
both.

------
phnofive
> “This analysis does not mean that dog and cat ownership should be curtailed
> for environmental reasons, but neither should we view it as an unalloyed
> good”

Money well spent.

~~~
kasey_junk
But it’s fairly easy to see how you might tax pets more to cover the
externalities better right?

~~~
aeternum
Why only look at carbon though? We could tax non-pet owners as they have
statistically higher cortisol levels and high-blood pressure vs. pet owners.
Non-dog owners are also more likely to get insufficient exercise. Children of
non-pet households are more likely to have asthma and allergies.

On the flip side, pet owners are more likely to get parasites, cat-scratch
disease, or toxo.

Taxes for everyone!

~~~
the8472
That's a false equivalence. If bad health is a concern you handle that through
a direct "tax" (e.g. increased health insurance premiums based on general
lifestyle/health assessments), not through such indirect measures as a non-pet
tax. On the other hand the cost of pets (carbon footprint, other environmental
damage) is directly related to the pets or their food, thus taxes would be
directly levied on those aspects.

------
forkexec
People living are a driver of carbon emissions. Should we defenestrate
ourselves to commercial non-journalism and feel guilty and insecure about not
immediately committing suicide?

------
hn_throwaway_99
I feel these kind of articles are, if not "dumb", then just pointless. You
know what else is a big driver of carbon emissions: humans. We would certainly
have a lot lower carbon emissions if half of us voluntarily committed suicide,
but that doesn't seem like a realistic proposal.

Also, the lack of analysis in this article doesn't help. There is nothing in
this article, for example, that says how much of the meat protein that goes
into pet food would essentially be waste from meat production intended for
humans.

~~~
KorematsuFred
Having babies is THE BIGGEST sin one can commit against the planet.

~~~
mc32
So, do you think a policy like the OCP in the PRC is the way countries should
go? How would you run it to ensure it's not an unforgiving cruel singly
numbers oriented goal which will run roughshod over actual people?

