Where can I get good information about the global impacts of keeping pets?

Animals live in the world naturally so keeping them as pets doesn’t seem any more harmful to the environment.

I agree 100% with @marinelife

If you choose to not own a large dog, or any other carnivorous pet, that is your choice, but be careful about getting too militant with others.

The best place to put your energy is into pet over population and to advocate spaying and neutering instead of trying eliminate people from keeping pets. Not gonna happen, and one must be careful of idealism becoming oppressive.

All you can do is your own part.

Pets are mostly bred by people, or stolen from their natural habitats and then put on “feed.” I am not advocating militancy, oppressive idealism, or indeed forming any kind of campaign. I am asking for sources of data to help me form an opinion.

They appear to be an increasingly huge extravagance. I disagree. They are not a huge extravagance. I have many pets. Most of whom are adopted. Animals need care just as humans do.

I am asking for sources of data to help me form an opinion. From your description it appears as though you already have an opinion.

Here is an article on pet keeping that I found interesting. The real concern with animals and the environment has nothing to do with pet-keeping and everything to do with factory farms

i.e.: Pet keeping is a red herring argument for corporate farms

Thank you for the link. I have written a letter to Dr. Serpell. The link you provided was not an article, but rather an abstract of a lecture he delivered at the inaugural Minding Animals conference, and hence contained no analysis.

I am not yet sure of myself as regards the “hugeness” of the extravagance of pet keeping. It APPEARS that it is substantial. I would very much like to quantify it in a more concrete and certainly less emotional way. People tend to underestimate the impacts of their behaviors because the market economy so carefully conceals those impacts beyond the consumer’s perceptual horizon. I don’t care whether YOU think that keeping pets is a extravagance for YOU. I am considering this on a global level. There is only so much food grown on the planet, and a good bit of it goes to pets. I would like to know how much. Certainly, not all of that food COULD be consumed by human beings. But some of it could. How much? How does the diversion of food to pets raise the overall price of food? There are many questions I would like DATA on.

I agree that factory farms and CAFOs are a huge problem. But is that to say that “the real concern with animals and the environment has NOTHING to do with pet keeping”? Pet keeping DEPENDS upon factory farming. So at the very least, it has something to do with it. I never asserted that pet keeping is the only problem or that factory farming wasn’t a problem.

I would appreciate answers from people who have actual LINKS to actual DATA. Thanks!

This is the same argument as car pollution, gas usage…no different. The real impact on the environment happens at the corporate level, not the individual level. Period. You can search the Net as much as you desire, the answer from every impact study will be the same.

@SpazieLover: You seem to wish this to be a very simple issue with pre-determined findings that you’ve already made without resort to actual research. I didn’t ask about car pollution, gas usage, etc. These destructive environmental factors are more generally agreed-upon and understood than Fido’s. And, as a lifelong student of economics, I know that consumer demand plays a role in driving corporate behavior. Corporations generate vast quantities of meowmix because people demand it. If you believe that Corporations made people want to have cats so that they would buy meowmix, I agree with that, too. In any case, people’s behavior IS a central problem. If people knew that the “real” planetary cost of generating silos of meowmix for their puddy tats were profound, perhaps they would think twice about having, say, 2, 3 or 15 cats, and confine themselves to one, or none.

This article on Global Animal‘s website may be of interest, as it discusses the topic from both sides. It might provide some other leads for you as well.

Dr. Serpell has responded with press proofs from a chapter he contributed to for an upcoming book. It contains an extensive bibliography of citations mostly about the evolutionary basis and medical/social impacts (good and bad) of petkeeping. (I dispute neither.)

Some numbers: Americans alone keep 75 million dogs and 90.5 million cats. We spend $50 billion a year on pets. A medium-sized dog has the same energy profile as a 4×4 SUV driven 6,200 miles, as well as building the SUV in the first place. American dogs alone consume as many calories as 35 million people. It takes 20,000 square miles of productive farmland to produce that many calories.

This is a good beginning.

Suggestion: Before you begin your crusade against house pets, it is necessary to examine your underlying premises that you seem to take for granted.

That is to say, Check Your Premises.

Your first premise is that Global Warming exists and is an imminent threat.
Your second premise is that Global Warming is mostly caused by mankind and can therefore be reversed by mankind.

Before you begin your crusade against pets, you must (1) find reliable, factual, undeniable proof of the Green House Effect and it’s threat to us and (2) prove that mankind is responsible for the Green House Effect.

When examining it’s existence and threat, be careful not to succumb to the bias that recent weather patterns prove the Green House Effect. You must look at the temperature over a longer period of time. You must also look at the devices recording the temperature and their proximity to urban, and thus much hotter, areas. You must also examine the data and the formulas behind the data.

If it does exist, and we find that the Green House Effect is mostly due to natural cycles in the earth (see: ice ages and periods of melting), then it is obviously illogical to spend trillions of dollars on something we cannot effect seeing as how, if true, is simply a natural cycle in the Earth’s history.

Conclusion:

Check Your Premises!