Posted on 11/15/2009 8:54:44 AM PST by managusta
OK. You've heard all the talk about this crucial conference in Copenhagen and you've decided to clean up your carbon footprint.
First a few pet related facts:
* Dogs occupy 6 million UK households
* Cats are close behind - 5.2 million
What I am talking about is our pets' environmental "paw print".
A big dog consumes around 1,000 calories a day - half that of an adult woman.
The issue of carbon paw prints has been in the news recently thanks to a book: Time to Eat the Dog.
The authors claim that keeping a dog has the same ecological impact as driving a 4.6 litre Land Cruiser 10,000km a year.
Instead of measuring emissions of CO2,they calculated the literal footprint or "global hectare" (gha) - the amount of land it takes to support a given activity.
So they worked out that constructing and driving the Land Cruiser for a year takes 0.41 gha.
Growing and manufacturing the 164kg of meat and 95kg of cereals a collie eats every year takes about 0.84 gha.
However, an Alsatian consumes even more - its paw print is more like 1.1 gha.
By their reckoning, that is more than the environmental footprint of the average Indian person, 0.8 gha of resources.
In the book the average resident of Cardiff requires just 1.89 gha.
The average American requires 9.5 gha.
A cat needs 0.15 gha, a hamster 0.014 gha, and a canary 0.007 gha.
So how can we get the companionship and pleasure of pet ownership without it weighing too heavily on our carbon consciences? The answer is simple,eat your dog!
So, if you are planning to pop your pooch in the pot, here's a link to a tasty dog stew.
http://www.recipesource.com/ethnic/asia/filipino/00/rec0001.html
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
No Fry Dog ping.
Ghaaaah!
Will the lunacy ever end?
I don't care how many hectares of carbon foot print my dog consumes. But if he eats my pack of gum again he barkbeque.
So why stop at the dog. I think we ought to figure out a way to reduce government budgets, get rid of dangerous deliquents, feed the poor,reduce our carbon footprint, free up valuable land and stop factory farming all in one bold move. It’s time to remember it’s called long pork for a reason.
Most dog food is made from scraps that would be thrown away.
My dog is the cheapest and best house alarm ever made.
Dogs have saved more human lives than any other animal.
My dog is a rescued dog that cost $80 with his shots.
My dog is the first to great me when I get home, tired and beat, and his tail wagging and licking my hand makes me forget all the b.s. at work, if even for just a little while.
Time to eat Reporters?
I’d say we start with eating some of the BBC staff. We’ll start with the nice plump ones. Put ‘em on a barbecue spit; that fat will provide a nice basting. Serve ‘em up with a few fries and a bit of slaw, it’ll be delicious.
These people are full-bore, flat-out, stark raving, bat-$#i! crazy.
They have embraced an elaborate fiction and convinced themselves that it is reality. And now they want the rest of us to sign on...
My cat is worth more than any environazi, as she provides friendship and joy while an environazi is all about death and totalitarianism. If they want to save the planet, they can start by giving themselves lethal injections.
Or if I eat a female environmentalist, I can save two dogs.
I have one, no, two fat enough to butcher. But then I would lose 2 of my best friends, so I don’ think so!
When I was growing up on a farm in Iowa, the standard rule concerning edible livestock was that any critter that has a name is safe from becoming Sunday dinner.
My sister and I had a pet turkey named “Tom” (how original...hey, we were kids) that we raised from a ‘chick’ and he was imprinted with the image of us being his mom.
He followed us around constantly like a spare shadow and always came out to meet us, getting off the school bus each afternoon. He’d come out and fan out his feathers and strut around a bit. It was his main, possibly only, talent.
In early November, word leaked out to us that he was going to be the main course for Thanksgiving dinner. The old rule had been over-ridden and Tom was about to be “axed” literally.
Come the day before Thanksgiving, we all dreaded what was about to happen and nobody would volunteer to be his executioner. Just thinking about it spread through the family to where we were all nearly in tears.
Happy ending:
We couldn’t bear to kill Tom for dinner, so we ate the dog.
Get rid of house cats to allow vermin to replicate.
Eliminate dogs because they inhibit invasion of privacy.
Beat me to it! I was going to suggest cannibalism to cure the worlds problems!
Oriental Recipe:
Wok Your Dog
How many environmentalists would be willing to give up their coffee?
On visiting Costa Rica I saw mountain after mountain planted in uniform rows of coffee trees. Gone was the rich diversity of natural forest.
( By the way, I never drink coffee. Diet Mountain Dew is my caffeine fix. )
I am almost ready to take the First Step...to paraphrase
Shakespeare's Henry VI
“The first thing we do.....”
“Beat me to it! I was going to suggest cannibalism to cure the worlds problems!”
If that isn’t already the scholarly opinion of some prominent university ethicist, it will be soon.
The North Koreans went green a long time ago. Let’s be like them!
This is derivative of Jonathan Swift’s solution to the Irish Problem— eat the babies. He meant it in satire.
I think most people in most cultures understand that a pet is not food. I’m willing to bet that people in countries who have eaten dog do not eat their pet cricket or ornamental koi fish or their caged song bird. I’m guessing they eat stray dogs. In a poor place without dog-catchers and sewer/street drain systems, this probably helps the public health, to take packs of dogs off the street. But those same places in Asia that have people who eat dogs also have breeds of dogs that were definitely bred to be the companions of the well-to-do and would not be eaten.
I’ll bet this reporter thinks she’s really clever. I beg to differ. Most people get it about pets. She doesn’t.
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