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Comment by 11235813213455 | Hacker News Reader

The quite huge industry and services around pets (insurance, vet, healthcare, beauty, food, ..) and pets themselves are significantly damaging the environment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#Impact -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-dog-is... -- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-... -- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/feral-cats-kil...

Please think about it, share and act

edit: I know this usually gets downvoted because like blindly their toy pets, but it feels like a duty nowadays to remind it

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Here are some things for you to think about.

First, if you actually want to make an impact here, you shouldn't start off by antagonizing the people you're ostensibly trying to reach. As it stands, your message is probably most helpful to pet industries, since it allows pet owners to dismiss good arguments about the environmental objections to pet ownership by painting them with the anger your post evokes.

So here are some details, if you're interested... your post irrelevant to the topic. You're conflating issues of feral animals with pets. Of course these are related, but you need to work through that if you want to make a cogent point. Using phrases like "like blindly their toy pets" undermines anything else you might say. It hurts any chance you have to make a sincere point since it's indistinguishable from trolling.

Thanks, appreciate the advice, it's kind of a taboo topic

Maybe it's just your method of presentation is taboo. And maybe you feed into your feelings of self-righteousness about your crusade(s) by intentionally evoking negative reactions from those you are trying to influence.

Honestly it's unintentional, I don't really understand the negative reactions. What I've wrote are not maybe's, it's facts about one of the ways to relieve the environment. It's just my sincere immediate reaction about "Pets insurances", it makes absolutely no sense to me in our environmental context. I can take as many downvotes as people want, but I just hope to at trigger a questioning, not hate

This tiny sentience (alone in the universe as far as we know) has been given the fantastic wealth of a little planet. Of course we should spend it wisely.

But the only thing more pathetic that a spendthrift foolishly wasting their inheritance is a miser making themselves miserable grasping at every cent.

A bunch of fuel companies are responsible of 71% of carbon emission [1] but yes let's talk people out of having pets.

[1]: https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1...

Fuel companies sell fuel. They aren't burning it. The fuel companies' customers would be the ones responsible for the emissions.

They sell fuel having prepared it for burning, put it in tankers, and sent it to sites that pour it into the machines that burn it. Ergo they are responsible for its impacts, and should be taxed, regulated and penalised accordingly. The entire environmental impact should be on the producer and seller, and fully priced into their sales. Customers would then be incentivised to find a more economic, and less impactful fuel.

there are fuel companies because there are billion people in their cars, of course it's something to tackle as well, I don't own a car personally

But a pet is equivalent to 2 4x4 cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#cite_note-8 so it can't hurt to start with that, or with anything else that would reduce pollution basically, at any scale. The problem is the accumulation, if most people reduce their environmental footprint by a half, the effect is very significant, it's like twice less humans

Everything that people own has some carbon cost associated with is, so the mere presence of a carbon cost doesn't justify getting rid of it.

Why would you argue that pets specifically are something that people should give up? People have needs that go beyond food, water, and shelter (e.g. play, love, stimulation, etc.) that will have to be factored into any plan to reduce carbon emissions. It seems to me that pets are an excellent value in terms of degree to which they provide for their needs versus associated carbon cost.

Yes we have needs, but the planet has limits that we already hit, so we now should all have a moral duty to limit/filter our non-essential needs

The sources show how significant pets impact is (1/5th of the world meat+fish production, think about the processing, transport, and all intermediate materials required for this and the pollution that generates, and finally the ecosystem damages via outdoors and feral ones)

I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure that the needs that pets supply are non-essential. For many people they are a significant, if not primary, source of companionship and joy. I think we would need a plan for how to offset removing something so important.

Same thing can and should be said for toy humans. Or any hobby you have. Or anything you choose to do with this life.

I eat meat, fly often, race cars, like taking long roadtrips, own an SUV, and have 2 cats.

But I also reuse, recycle, use a tankless hot water heater, carpool in an EV, have solar on my roof, don't have A/C at home, live in a temperate climate, and don't have any toy humans.

Are you.... calling children "toy humans"?

Yes; relevant context is the flagged-to-death parent post.

I thought about it, then acted by giving my dog a pat on the head and my cat some chin scritches.

So I looked at one. Brazil has an estimated population of one billion feral dogs according to the WaPo link. A number I find very difficult to believe, yet, if you have a billion of anything the size of a dog, it's pretty much guaranteed to be destructive, no? e.g. rabbits in Australia.

That's quite a bit removed from pets in countries that control strays, have dog wardens and such. Dogs need no commercial pet food, mainly waste from the huge industrial food globals today -- they will almost certainly do better on traditional feeds -- leftovers, bones, etc, without added oils, colour and sugars.

We are the environment, we're part of it, we're also the solution if we want to be. A better place to start might be to try and figure out how to control a feral dog population of a billion...

There are probably around 1 billion domestic pets overall, since there are close to 8 billion individuals, mostly from developed countries, where the culture is sadly to have pets

I don't know about the population of feral 'pets', it can makes sense that it's even larger

Anyway both are significantly damaging for different reasons (feral: ecosystem damages and native species reduction, domestic: they are part of the (over)consumerism system, so they virtually increase the human population)

How to cut down both of them? first starting with domestic pets which is the source of the problem, over-consumerism in general

From a fast skim of Wikipedia that estimate seems to be overstating it by 2-4x

There are going to be a dozen more urgent sources of emissions, environmental damage etc before we start restricting pets. Humans in the developed world are emitting vastly more than their pet -- first discourage the humans over breeding, outlaw religious edicts that make a stand against common sense contraception, etc. Constrain fossil fuel use, consumerism, capitalism.

Thus far it looks like there is little to no chance of any of that happening, so a campaign about pets, carrier bags or drinking straws is rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

Articles are exclusively about feral cats and dogs, but yes, “toy pets”.

Even the one mentioning that pets eat 1/5th of the worlds meat and fish production? or have an environmental footprint equivalent to 2 4x4 cars? (in the reference)

That car fact is in a quote by a guy with a company selling a meatless pet food alternative. I’m going to need an valid source, not a financially motivated comment to a journalist.

Your other links don’t hold up much better. The cat ones advocate for keeping domesticated cats indoors. The dog article isn’t about pets either, but roaming packs of strays. I doubt you have to try very hard to convince anyone that stray dogs are a problem.

Pets eat 1/5th of the world meat and fish production, do you want sources for that (easy to google)? Do you understand this fact alone show how large their environmental impact is? Do you still see an evil conspiracy behind those facts, and why?

I agree with you, but it's kind of like pointing out how much destruction and suffering is involved with our factory-farming of meat: Nobody wants to hear it right now. Try back in 50 years.

I think the issue is at least partially a failure to present an alternative vision.

People do the things they do and consume the things they do in order to meet some need (stimulation, entertainment, pleasure, etc.). Although, I don't think it's unreasonable to advocate for some austerity, to a significant degree people are going to need alternatives that meet the needs that were formerly met by the things they are giving up.

It seems to me that environmentalists tend to fail to provide a vision for what those alternatives could be.

We may need to reconsider what is austerity also, is living without a pet austerity? is washing ourselves with a soap bar instead of a multitude of cosmetic products and stuff austerity? is eating local legumes/fruits austerity? is using a bike to commute or go shopping austerity? etc.. There are many environmental-friendly alternatives, I think it's every person's role to find those alternatives (politics are more interested to foster consumerism), this guy is quite inspirational https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX4kq4QfYRA

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