Lumen Winter 2023 - Flipbook - Page 32
Best pets for the planet
Carbon paw prints
By Susan Hazel
You and your dog have just survived an
apocalypse and there is nobody else alive.
But you have radiation exposure and know
you will die soon. What do you do?
This is the scenario for the robotic engineer
Finch Weinberg (Tom Hanks) in the movie
Finch. To look after Goodyear, his dog,
Finch trains his helper-robot Jeff on how
to care for dogs. In one of the last scenes
Finch teaches Jeff how to play fetch with
Goodyear.
I couldn’t imagine life without my dogs. For
you it may be your cat, or turtle, or parrot,
or snake, or rabbit. Losing a companion
animal can result in profound grief, similar
to losing a family member. Being left in a
position where you can no longer look after
your companion animal is unfortunately not
uncommon: moving to a rental where you
can’t keep an animal, having to move into
residential care, losing your job so you can
no longer afford to keep them. I doubt many
people would think to add an apocalypse to
this list.
But should we think about pets and an
apocalypse? I don’t mean we should all plan
to get helper robots. But perhaps we should
start thinking more about how keeping
companion animals contributes to using
up all of Earth’s resources, or nudging
climate over a cliff resulting in cataclysmic
climate change.
Is it sustainable to keep dogs and cats?
Keeping companion animals adds to
greenhouse gas emissions, mostly through
the food they eat. In the USA dogs and cats
consume as much energy as nearly one-fifth
of the total human population. Pet foods
also contain a lot of protein, with a lot of
this from other animals. We farm animals
for human food, but a lot goes into food
for dogs and cats. Livestock production
contributes around 8% of total greenhouse
gas emissions globally, with ruminants like
cattle producing most of this.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE
It’s not only the greenhouse gas emissions
from the production that are bad - land is
cleared for grain and livestock production.
Land clearing threatens species directly
through loss of habitat, as well as resulting in
carbon release.
I love my dogs, but if keeping them
endangers wildlife species that doesn’t seem
fair. What if the only animals we saw any
more were those kept as companions or used
for food? No longer hearing birds on the
walk to the train in the morning, or seeing
kangaroos grazing at dusk in the hills.
To make matters worse, it’s not only the
issue with greenhouse gas emissions and
climate change. There is an ethical problem
feeding our non-human companions. Global
food production needs to increase by around
50% by 2050 to be able to feed the world
human population. Most of the food used
in dog and cat food could be used as human
food. If food supplies become short, should
we be prioritising feeding humans over nonhuman animals?
What can we do?
Maybe in the future we’ll have a wearable
device that calculates greenhouse gas
emissions and total resource use from
everything we buy and do. If we wanted to
drive our car to Darwin or fly to the USA
we would need to offset that by saving in
other ways. Getting rooftop solar, running
an electric car, or even not getting a car
at all. There might be an absolute limit to
the resources we use and greenhouse gases
we produce. We would have the choice of
how to use those credits, but once gone we
would have to wait before consuming more.
Keeping dogs would use credits, and so
perhaps we would have to sell our car, or
become vegetarian.
Smaller dogs might become more popular
if their carbon footprint is smaller. My dogs
are Rosie, a Maltese cross (rescue dog)
and Ziggy, a Labrador Retriever. Ziggy is
still a puppy, but as an adult will eat about
a cup of dry food a day. Rosie grazes, and
eats around one third of a cup a day. Cats,
or even rats, would have an even smaller
carbon footprint. Will the companion
animals we keep change if we limit their
greenhouse gas emissions? Perhaps large
and giant breeds would be a thing of the
past? Great Danes would go the way of the
Model T Ford.
Can changing what you feed them help?
Pet food could become part of the solution
rather than the problem by the ‘upcycling’ of
food waste. It’s estimated around one third
of food is never eaten, left to rot in the field,
unsold in supermarkets, or wasted in the
household. Upcycling uses food that would
otherwise wind up in compost or landfill, to
be diverted for other purposes. There is not
a big market for upcycled pet food yet, but
there could be.
Feeding of dogs and cats can be a
controversial issue. There are proponents
of raw food diets, but these are more likely
to use edible food that could go into human
food supply. Dry food has a lower carbon
footprint than wet food, and may be the
most sustainable type of food for the future.
It’s not just the input of what you feed your
dog or cat that is important; their waste is
also a problem. With over five million dogs
in Australia, each month they produce as
much dog poo as the weight of the Sydney
Harbour Bridge. Pet faeces can by disposed
of in the toilet where it will be processed
as for human waste, or in composting
or landfill. Many local councils provide
compostable dog poo bags now, but whether
or not this should be put into your green
bin to be collected by the council varies.
Composting it yourself may be problematic
unless you manage your compost to kill any
organisms. I’d love to see more local data
on what the best method of disposing of
dog faeces is so that I could base our own
disposal method on environmental impact
and greenhouse gas emissions.
