this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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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.

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[–] IHeartBadCode@kbin.social 7 points 8 months ago

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.