The Dog Ate My Oxygen

CNN reported on a book "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" by Robert and Brenda Vale, which asserts that dogs are as bad for the environment as driving an SUV, because they are carnivores and a lot of land is required to produce dog food.

Of course dogs have a carbon footprint as do humans, houses, cars and factories.  In fact, most humans are carnivores which require miles of land to produce food for billions of cows, sheep. buffalo and other food mammals for our eating pleasure. The methane alone produced by these animals is in and of itself polluting. Additionally, we use unclean fuels, dump toxins in our oceans, waste finite resources as if they were renewable and vomit factory emissions into the air we breathe with no regard to the consequences.

I wholly subscribe to the notion that we should always choose the humane and environmentally conscious option at every crossroad. But - do we really want to guilt pet owners and increase the euthanasia numbers of unwanted dogs and cats for these reasons? How about reducing or eliminating the amount of meat we consume, driving a hybrid and/or electric car and adopt pets from shelters rather than encouraging puppy mills and breeders to make more. That should really help!

Here is the link to the CNN story: http://ow.ly/4pJ0q