Gaia does not approve of Doggos and Kittehs.
Can pets be part of a sustainable future?
The short, if unpopular, answer is probably not. Two German Shepherds use more resources just for their annual food needs than the average Bangladeshi uses each year in total. And while pet owners may disagree that Bangladeshis have more right to exist than their precious Schnookums, the truth is that pets serve little more societal purpose than keeping us company in an increasingly individualistic and socially isolated consumer society.
And this isn’t an isolated Guardian whackjob making this argument. A UCLA study reached essentially the same conclusion.
And the answer to this “problem” is… spoiler alert… Big Socialist Government.
Governments could facilitate this by strengthening the pet licensing system, for example, creating a very steep tax on pets (along with pet products and pet food) and tripling that tax for pets that aren’t spayed or neutered (so that only breeders would choose not to fix their pets).
At the same time, marketing of pets and pet products should be tightly regulated (or banned outright), and polluting veterinarian services like chemotherapy should be reserved only for service animals.
And then, outlaw pet ownership entirely. Make cats and dogs community property, to be shared by everyone and allocated by the Government according to fairness and sustainability.
Reserving a play date with your favorite Golden Retriever once a week would reduce pet ownership – and the resulting economic and environmental costs – dramatically as people felt comfortable occasionally playing with a shared pet instead of owning one.
What is WRONG with these people?? Society doesn’t need wild animals, either. Save ones that can be used for food, and kill off the rest. The argument they use can justify ANYTHING!!
They’ll take my cat when they pry him from my cold, dead lap.
One of the more dubious decrees of the UK government when WW2 started was to kill most of the pet cats and dogs in Britain on the premise that with food rationing they would starve anyway. It didn’t help morale…
Communists and Socialists are all about control. Period.
Having lived next door to neighbors with incessant barking dogs that damn near drove me crazy more than once I can almost be on board with this but not really. I do wish that people would be much more responsible with their pet owner ship. The answer, as usual, is in personal responsibility instead of substituting governmental force for civilized behavior.
The food resources for the dogs wouldn’t go out to a foreign nation anyway. Course the argument would also hold using this logic, for food rationing period, since the average American or European probably uses 2-5 times the food resources of a Bangladeshi.
Solution: Uber Rent A Pet
Madam Gloria’s House of Pet A Tutes
Cat house ( rates by the hour)
I once got into a chat with a leftie who was against strength training because it’s so ridiculous how our narcissistic bodybuilders consume all those protein supplements, when people in Bangladesh are hungry.
I tried to explain that strength training is for everyone, even the people of Bangladesh who are NOT going to benefit anyway from Americans boycotting protein supplements and exercise. It didn’t work.
Sad part is: this was a science-y grad student headed to work for Congress. I tried.
An American dog is worth more than an average Bangladeshi.
Rent a pets are actually already popular in Japan.
Also, clearly they only want rich people to hsve pets!
the solution is more money for the politicians less money for the workers. what a shock!
Well you know what they say: when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
The Left want to save all the people of the world who are down & out… not sure what those people are to do once they become middle class and want things, but not like they’ll ever find out, cos the Left wants only to keep them around as poor pets… sort of like 4-legged ones, only with 2 legs. Not as cute or trainable, either. Much more demanding and dangerous.
Like I always say, the Left are sado-masochistic femme fatales, depressed, suicidal, envious and resentful adult children of psychobabble edumacation, running with scissors. And they rule by moral superiority through crazy-making. Their shit don’t stink. The world burns around them and they blame it on anyone trying to ignore their own hardships to better themselves. How dare you want to be a happy individual, goddammit? Only our sanctioned artistes can dangle the dream of individual freedom through their freakish pandering to the broke-asses of the world for a $1 download, clicks and voluntary sharing of all your thoughts. Let them eat cake.
Typical – the problem to a lefty is that, per some “study”, two good-sized dogs consume more resources than a Bangladeshi.
So what? We also waste resources feeding and housing academics with about as much use as t***s on a boar.
It never occurs to them that, perhaps, a problem is that Bangladeshis are in such a sad way. If we all get rid of our pets (I’m with Wraith in #2: want my cat? Go ahead, make my day), the Bangladeshis will still be in a bad way.
Not only do most pet owners not want to share pets, as I understand pet behavior, most pets (especially dogs) don’t particularly want to share families either. This is an asinine suggestion.
I wonder if there’s any correlation between the progressive SJW lunacy, and the disturbing rise of “puppies” and Furries.