The environmental cost of dogs and cats

The LA Times reports:

You’ve heard about the carbon footprint, but what about the carbon paw-print? According to a new study, U.S. cats’ and dogs’ eating patterns have as big an effect as driving 13.6 million cars for a year. ...

Cats’ and dogs’ overall caloric consumption was about 19% that of humans in the U.S.

“Just to put that in context, that’s about the same amount of calories that the country of France consumes and so that whet my appetite a little bit,” Orkin said. ...

Notably, dogs and cats actually consumed about 33% of the animal-derived calories that humans did, perhaps because their diets are generally more meat-heavy than ours, Orkin said. On the other end, they also produce about 30% of the feces that humans do (and much of that gets thrown in the trash in plastic bags, instead of treated the way that human waste is).

In short, Orkin concluded, American dogs and cats eat enough animal product to account for about 64 million tons of methane and nitrous oxide, two other powerful greenhouse gases. That’s about the same impact on our warming climate as driving 13.6 million cars for a year.

Save the planet. Kill all the dogs and cats.