Vox: Your Pet is Now a Climate Problem
In 2016, Pets Were Climate Change Victims. Today, They're Perpetrators.
Pet adoptions or ownership in the United States grew somewhere upwards of 10% during 2020, especially during the pandemic. No surprise there. And pet ownership is huge: 85 million American households have at least one pet, some 67% of homes. Some 13% of people became first-time pet owners in 2020. Among those who adopted a pet, 66% were adding one to their household. Dogs outnumber cats, which is no surprise. Who takes a cat outside for a walk or run?
And surveys show that pet ownership during our global pandemic has been a huge benefit. Nine in ten people credit their pet(s) with helping them “cope emotionally with the pandemic.” But their helping you cope may be stressing them out.
But you, pet owners, are facing a new challenge. This time, from “Climate Change” activists. They’re coming after your pet, especially your carnivore-eating ones. Especially cats, since they’re “obligate carnivores.” From news coverage of a 2017 study:
UCLA professor Gregory S. Okin found that meat-eating dogs and cats create the equivalent of 64 million tons of carbon dioxide per year based on the energy consumption required to produce their food, or the same impact as driving 13.6 million cars.
“I like dogs and cats, and I’m definitely not recommending that people get rid of their pets or put them on a vegetarian diet, which would be unhealthy,” Mr. Okin said in a statement. “But I do think we should consider all the impacts that pets have so we can have an honest conversation about them. Pets have many benefits but also a huge environmental impact.”
Get a hamster instead, he advises. Good luck with those neighborhood walks.
We were warned in 2016 about the negative consequence of climate change on pets—this, from the Animal Medical Center.
Higher ambient temperatures change our behavior, which in turn impacts our pets. When the temperature soars in the summer, we keep our pets inside, avoiding heatstroke and heat exhaustion. But the lack of exercise can result in obesity and the lack of mental stimulation in boredom and behavior disorders like separation anxiety.
Like the potential impact of global warming on humans, the effect on pets may be significant and may directly impact their health. Just another really good reason to support measures to decrease our carbon footprints and pawprints!
Or this, from Ecowatch:
Have you noticed that the flea situation in the past few years has been out of control? Our pets never used to get fleas and suddenly it’s a huge problem in our house. Fleas aren’t the only pests on the rise. Tick and mosquito populations are also exploding right now. It turns out that climate change is creating an ideal habitat for pests and that’s bad news for your pets.
But that’s old news now. They turned from trying to use your pet as a pawn for their climate “awareness” campaign into a target.
Vox has run an interesting post on how our pets are “gobbling up our planet.” I’m not sure what was more interesting, the post or its cartoon-style, welcome-to-Idiocracy-2021 format. It is full of interesting suggestions and is sure to compound any neuroses you or others may have already experienced from our media’s pandemic fearmongering, which now features neighbors lecturing neighbors about how to share sidewalks (especially from my very politically blue neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia). And you should see the comments. Maybe not.
So much fear, so little time, and so many people’s lives to control. And it adds credence to suggestions - some call it a conspiracy theory - that the COVID pandemic was a dress rehearsal for a “climate emergency.” But is it conservatives who are fearmongering here? People on the left are actually promoting it. Does it qualify as a conspiracy theory if it’s true?
I almost missed this post by Vox because I am not one of their regular consumers. But my Arlington neighbors probably are.
So your pet ownership is officially the latest antagonist in our very politicized, post-pandemic, climate change environment. They’ve long gone after farmers, cows, and meat-eaters, and some are fighting back. Some have already come after children. No demographic (human or pet) is apparently immune from ideological assault.
I can’t wait to see who the eco-terrorists target next. Is there anyone or anything left?