It is a melancholy recognition, with Earth Day upon us again,
that the calendar has come full circle since the last, and that the
human species has squandered yet another annum in the struggle to
save the planet. Our collective thirst for fossil fuels remains
unquenched and perhaps unquenchable. Though Americans have tried to
lead the way — toting home compartmentalized recycling bins from
Bed, Bath and Beyond, switching to paper grocery bags at the Whole
Foods Market, and attending sustainability conferences at our
leading colleges and universities — hundreds of millions of
Indians and Chinese stubbornly and selfishly refuse to abide the
grinding but green poverty of their current lives in order to
pursue the very material comforts that poison our environment.
Americans, therefore, must do even more, must set an
example that the people of the world can point towards and emulate,
an example that both underscores the dire condition of
Gaia and highlights the moral imperative implied therein.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. We must look beyond
stop gap solutions such as hybrid cars, energy-efficient light
bulbs and low flow toilets.
We must look, in short, to our best friends.
According to a 2006 study by Robert and Brenda Vale, a
husband and wife team of research fellows at Victoria University in
New Zealand who specialize in sustainable living design, the carbon
footprint of an average sized dog (including the land required to
feed the farm animals consumed by Spot in his daily diet) is
roughly twice as large as the carbon footprint of a Toyota Land
Cruiser (including construction, fuel and maintenance). The carbon
footprint of the average cat is roughly equal to that of a
Volkswagen Golf. The Vales’ estimates have since been confirmed by
scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, England
and the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC.
The Vales titled their 2006 treatise Time to Eat
the Dog? This, of course, was never intended as a serious
policy recommendation. In the first place, most of us have become
far too emotionally attached to our pets to consider ingesting
them. In the second place, neither dogs nor cats are especially
delectable animals, with their flesh, regardless of how it is
prepared, whether filleted or on-the-bone, being especially tough
and stringy. And in the third place, true environmentalists
understand that the ultimate goal is to wean human beings off meat
altogether.
Nevertheless, a state-sponsored program of mandatory
euthanasia for household pets seems doable. Or at least you’d think
so once the American public has been educated on the potential
benefits. Consider: There are approximately 75 million domestic
dogs in the United States. Their environmental impact thus equals
150 million … I almost said “cars” but the correct equivalence
is “SUVs.” Dwell on that number for a moment. One hundred
and fifty million SUVs. As of 2006, there were only 100
million SUVs on the road in the United States, out of a total of
250 million registered vehicles. Hence, a policy of humane canine
eradication would achieve the same green goals as the elimination
of every single SUV in America … plus another 50 million beyond
that total.
That pleasant prospect, remember, doesn’t even include the
eco-boon of ridding ourselves of cats. There are roughly 85 million
of them in the United States — each one the equivalent, in terms
of its environmental damage, of a Golf. Granted, the Golf is a
substantially smaller SUV than the Land Cruiser. What’s more, the
one-to-one Mr. Whiskers/Golf ratio means that the planetary
advantage accrued by a blanket feline extermination will not
generate the eye-popping numbers of its canine counterpart. Taken
together, however, it seems safe to conclude that euthanizing every
household pet in America, especially if hamsters and gerbils and
(in particular) bunny rabbits are thrown into the mix, would amount
to, and perhaps even surpass, the eco-dream of removing every
motorized vehicle from our roads.
Now I am not so naïve as to think that such a policy could
be enacted tomorrow. We are a sentimental people when it comes to
our four-legged friends. Witness, for example, the general
opprobrium to which the professional football player Michael Vick
was subjected for the killing of a mere handful of pups — even
though, as it turns out, he was on the side of the environmental
angels. Surely, Mr. Vick’s transgression lay in his motivation and
methodology, not in his sustainability outcomes.
The first step, in other words, may consist not of an act
of Congress but of a shift in our own attitudes. Common perception
is the key. If you strolled past your neighbor’s driveway and
discovered four Land Cruisers parked side by side, what would you
think of him? Would you shun him? Would you communicate your
disdain to others? Would he soon become a social pariah? Likewise,
therefore, if you discover two dogs frolicking and wrestling on his
front lawn: You’re not looking at Buddy and Jake. You’re looking at
Earth Killer One and Earth Killer Two.
Once attitudes have come around, legislation can follow.
The logical place to start will be with the larger canine breeds —
Great Danes, Mastiffs, Rottweilers, Saint Bernards and Akitas —
and work our way down to Beagles, Dachshunds, Poodles and Yorkies.
(Exceptions can be made, of course, for seeing eye dogs.) After the
last Chihuahua has been dispatched, we can re-tool the machinery of
the state for a final feline solution. The entire process, even
with the inevitable holdouts in pantries and attics, should take no
more than three years.
The justification for the foregoing proposal, of course,
hinges on the answer to one critical question: How
committed are we to saving the Earth? Each reader, in the end,
must decide that for himself.
