Save the Planet, Eat Your Dog 942
Posted
by
timothy
from the children-too-stringy dept.
from the children-too-stringy dept.
R3d M3rcury writes "New Zealand's Dominion Post reports on a new book just released, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living. In this book, they compare the environmental footprint of our housepets to other things that we own. Like that German Shepherd? It consumes more resources than two Toyota SUVs. Cats are a little less than a Volkswagen Golf. Two hamsters are about the same as a plasma TV. Their suggestions? Chickens, rabbits, and pigs. But only if you eat them."
Environmentalist nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:2, Insightful)
So how ridiculous do these "sustainable" efforts have to get before real scientists can start denying this CO2 deal again?
Right now we are treated as holocaust deniers if we dare question if CO2 is really what we should focus on. Is the microscopic amount of CO2 release actually created by humans compared to the Oceans, Volcanoes, and Bacteria really significant enough to warm the globe? If a dog produces as much CO2 as a hummer? Come on people there is clearly more to climate change than CO2, can we change our focus already?
"No Dog On Board" sign Makes SUV's Safe From ELF! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Environmentalist nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of the far-left environmental whackos seem more interested in destroying quality of life for humans than they do in meaningful environmental improvements.
Take away the pets and see its effect (Score:4, Insightful)
With no pets, instead of spending time playing with them, I'll turn on the TV, get in the car and drive around mostly to waste time, etc.
These results might be sound on paper, but I highly doubt real world would approve of them.
What about emissions ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, they compare them by how much land/energy it takes to produce the food/fuel. I would be interested how they came upon their figures for fossil fuels. But my main concern is that they never mention emissions. The main concern with cars isn't so much how much fuel they use, but how much pollution they put out...
Also, it seems they didn't factor in producing the vehicles, which also uses a lot of energy and puts out a lot of pollution. Factor those in and I'm sure pets will turn out much cleaner by orders of magnitude...
Oh, and did I mention pets are "biodegradable", unlike cars ?
Hello neighbour! (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupid comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't most of the food we give to dogs
hey compared this with the footprint of a Toyota Land Cruiser, driven 10,000km a year, which uses 55.1 gigajoules (the energy used to build and fuel it). One hectare of land can produce 135 gigajoules a year, which means the vehicle's eco-footprint is 0.41ha – less than half of the dog's.
What a load of bullshit. We fuel SUVs using fossil fuels which adds to the carbon cycle, hence contributing to global warming. Now, if we were powering our pets of fossil fuels as well then we could easily compare them.
10,000km per year? (Score:4, Insightful)
How typical is an SUV that is driven for only 10000km per year? That's what, less than 7k miles? Average mileage (in the USA is 12k miles or more).
This is just another "study" where the numbers have been "stretched" to make a point.
right, what's next? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is ridiculous. Since I guess the human beings are the problem for the (broken) ecology, why not eat some to save the planet? There are over six billions of them, I guess China may start exporting some "human delicacy" (irony) :P
Theoretically they may be right, every higher developed creature has a thing called "basal metabolic rate" but that's the wrong model for determine effects of global warming. It's just stupid nonsense, although funny to read.
Cats (Score:3, Insightful)
They protect your food from vermin, and they decrease the demand for the poisons used to kill vermin.
I lived in an old rented house and cats were the only way to keep the mice out of our kitchen.
Not my dog (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupid comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
The food the pets eat (including the entire production cycle involving plant and animal ingredients, the transporation to your store, your transporting of it home, the packaging it's in, all of the overhead involved, and so on), the vet care they receive, the products you buy to make them clean, healthy, comfortable - all of those activities burn fuel. Lots of it. Unless your pet eats only stuff that you kill out in the back yard, your servicing of them is a huge resource burner.
Of course, it's not as bad as the combined effects of Soccer, Kayaking, and Rock Climbing. If people would just stop doing those things, we'd avoid all sorts of carbon emissions. Oh, and going to bars to drink. Seriously. What a waste of resources.
Re:Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good grief.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That article makes no sense : an animal doesn't consume more natural resources than a car.
If you give your dog the left overs from the table , instead of throwing it in the garbage can , i can't see it consume any natural resources . And after digestion , a dog fertilizes the soil , so the resources are giving back the ground . That the cycle of life , and it works much better than how a car works.
And when your pet dies , you burry it , or maybe burn it , etc , but it's remains also come back to the ground.
Which will be the same of you eat your pet , but then it takes until you die to be completely returned to the soil.
More Pollution is Better (Score:2, Insightful)
The process of life requires pollution. Not to be graphic, but life literally sustains itself by converting the environment (air, water, food) into pollution. On top of that, creating our comforts and pleasures require additional pollution.
The countries that pollute the least in the world are the countries with the shortest lifespans and the harshest living conditions.
The trick is not to eliminate pollution, but just remove it so it doesn't harm people. We are already quite effective at that. (And when we aren't it's usually due to a lack of property rights)
The longer and more comfortable a human life is, the more pollution is required.
The only way to eliminate pollution is to eliminate life itself.
Re:Take away the pets and see its effect (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone notice that 10km per year is pretty tame for driving? At my old job I commuted less than 30 minutes and was still putting on a lot more than that per year, by about 2-4 times as much actually.
Interesting rhetoric - but a bit shortsighted (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Environmentalist nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I consider myself to be somewhat of an environmentalist and sadly I'd have to agree with you. The left environmental movement seems to be using environmental concerns as a means to bash Capitalism rather than meaningfully protect the environment. I remember back in college talking to the local environmental group on campus and there was frankly, very little talk of actually protecting the environment and more talk about subsidies for "green jobs" and such. I left with a sense that the environmental movement as a whole was going down the wrong road. Instead of embracing the frugality of the economic right as a means to discourage waste, the movement has encouraged subsidies and general corporate welfare as the means. I don't believe that their strategy will improve environmental or economic conditions.
Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm fucking fed up with people absolutely losing their minds whenever the word "environment" is mentioned. Suddenly they're willing to buy stupid shit that makes no sense. People lose all objectivity, all ability to add up total cost of ownership and conversion and turn into sock puppets for large corps who are selling them fairytales about being green.
Shit like this wouldn't fly with a sane rationed well educated public:
1) Compulsory replacement of lightbulbs with more expensive technology "for the environment" (no it's not just because there's a huge profit to be made selling new technology at 20x the price, honest it's not). Never mind that LED technology has much more potential.
2) Creation of flimsy plastic bags that fucking fall apart so that you need twice as many to carry the same groceries followed by the removal of plastic bags with studier but still flawed and breakable "green" "enviro" bags which are now sold at large profit instead of being given away. Lets nickel and dime our customers to death in the name of the environment - but we couldn't possibly stop filling their mailboxes with dead tree junk mail. Fucking hypocrites!
3) Solar hot water systems that cost more environmentally and financially to produce, install, run maintain than their conventional counterparts, often require that they be supplemented/boosted by a conventional heater (so net negative gain in terms of production). Honest it's not about selling shit people don't need!
4) Water conservation and rationing. What a fucking joke. It's got nothing to do with environmental impact of building more dams and desalination plants and everything to do with the dollars it takes to do so. Water is not scarce on this planet. It recycles well if you don't abuse it badly with extremely noxious chemicals. The system is build to deal with the shit and piss of every creature on the planet. Anything short of sewage and noxious chemicals often can be reused if we weren't so skitish about grey water. Water as a scarce resource, and kids no longer being able to play in their back yards with a hose has nothing to do with environment and everything to do with politicians lining their pockets with taxes that should be spent on infrastructure.
Want to know what you can do to stop fucking the environment? No you don't need to fucking eat Fido. Don't have more than 2 kids in your lifetime. Want to be really good? Have just one. Not into kids? Don't let your birth control regime slip. The one reason we're fucking up there environment is that there's about 6.5 BILLION people and growing. That many of a species that without modern technology and medicine should by rights number in the tens or hundreds of thousands just isn't going to be sustainable. Yet we breed like we're insects and look for ways to live longer and longer (even if it means our quality of life is ass in old age).
Re:Environmentalist nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
A free market requires that everyone's property and individual rights be respected. Pollution and environmental damage are forms of rights violation so these "far-right free-market wackos" aren't so much free market as corporatist. To them environmental protection is not a priority but many such as myself argue that environmental protection is necessary for individual and property rights to be protected which is a requirement for any capitalist/free market to function properly.
interesting responses (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that eating pets is viable or necessary, but I find the responses interesting. When people say "we might as well eat neighbors|kids|whoever" they are pretty much putting the lives of animals on the level, value-wise, with the lives of humans. I'm a shameless speciesist (or is it species chauvinist?) and I'm always jarred by people treating animals as if they're as valuable, as humans. I know people who would rather use prisoners for medical research than animals. Seriously.
This thing goes pretty deep, and always amazes me. I used to work in an ER, and I had to sew up a child's face after she was bitten by a dog. After she was discharged , I was criticizing the family for having a 100lb carnivore that was bred for aggression living in the house with their 4 year old child. One of my co-workers got really angry at me, saying "we don't know that that child did to provoke the dog! Did you even ask that?" She blamed the kid and sided with the dog. I was dumbfounded. It fascinates me that people can work alongside one another and have profoundly divergent value systems. I'd have been less shocked to find that an otherwise amicable co-worker belonged to the Aryan Nation than to hear her side with the dog over a mauled child.
Re:Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Read up on the Earth's temperature over geological time scales [wikipedia.org]. It's fascinating - the world we live on is far more than a passive ball of rock.
For your example, the tank of water has an axolotl in it which blocks the leak when the water gets low enough. It's also situated next to a thirsty giraffe which can only drink water out of it when it's nearly full.
I guess what I'm getting at is that there are so many factors affecting the climate on a scale we couldn't dream of doing with present-day technology that while we may perturb it slightly, whether or not the global climate messes up to a degree which threatens life on the planet is way out of our control. (Obligatory blog whoring link [blogspot.com], read it if you agree with me so we can engage in a round of "hear hear"ing and drinking port and smoking cigars in the drawing room.)
Re:Good grief.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That article makes no sense : an animal doesn't consume more natural resources than a car. If you give your dog the left overs from the table , instead of throwing it in the garbage can , i can't see it consume any natural resources . And after digestion , a dog fertilizes the soil , so the resources are giving back the ground . That the cycle of life , and it works much better than how a car works.
And when your pet dies , you burry it , or maybe burn it , etc , but it's remains also come back to the ground. Which will be the same of you eat your pet , but then it takes until you die to be completely returned to the soil.
My car consumes no resources either. I put gas in at the pump, and then burn it and return it to the atmosphere, thus recycling it. When its old it will eventually go to scrap and most of its parts will be directly recycled aswell. The rest will be buried in land fill, thus returning it to the ground from where it came.
Re:Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:5, Insightful)
In reply to your points,
1) On CFLs. You have this one right. It's a ery obvious case of greenwash.
2) Getting plastic bags out of our waste would be a very good thing. I've seen how many end up in the ocean and affect sea life. I agree though that the
supermarkets cynical approach is to sell us plastic bags that should be cheaper to make. Today I bought a 'biodegradeable' bag made from corn starch or some such thing for 15c. I can't see how cornstarch is more expensive than using oil to make plastic. Someone is profiteering, supermarkets or bag makers?
3) I don't see your point with solar hot water systems. My parents had one since the mid 1960's. It was replaced once and has given them hot water for four decades. They don't take much in the way of materials to make. Its only a metal and glass panel on the roof and a tank. The booster uses much less energy since on a cool day it's only usually having to heat the water from 30 or 40 degrees C. Most of the time the problem was that the water would come out TOO hot.
4) Water scarcity. You obviously don't live in marginal land. The current round of drought in Australia is getting critical. I do agree though that de-salination is not the way to go. Here in Australia we should be pouring less water into cattle, cotton and rice and growing more water efficient crops. Also it's mostly a distribution problem.
Your conclusion is spot on. Exponential growth in a finite world will lead to catastrophe. As far as I can see there's not a politician on the planet other than the Chinese communist government that have made any attempt to really address that issue.
Re:interesting responses (Score:4, Insightful)
I notice your co-worker's response did nothing to refute your comment. It doesn't matter what the kid did to provoke the dog.
Instead of my dog... (Score:3, Insightful)
How about I eat an environmentalist?
Re:Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets break down your "mentalism". I'm not going to argue global warming as I'm sure you think its an evil hoax, so lets just do basic science and economics
1) Compulsory replacement of lightbulbs with more expensive technology "for the environment" (no it's not just because there's a huge profit to be made selling new technology at 20x the price, honest it's not). Never mind that LED technology has much more potential.
Lots of parts of the US, California for instance, and parts of Europe (UK) have or will have issues with electricity supply. Light bulbs are quite a part of that consumption this makes electricity a scare resource (excluding its environmental impact) by having things like energy standards against TVs, cookers and indeed lightbulbs you ensure that this scarce resource isn't wasted. So yes LED technology might be better but the point is that the old technology was certainly worse. Thus by making people use energy efficient devices (including lightbulbs) you actually stop things like rolling brown outs etc.
2) Creation of flimsy plastic bags that fucking fall apart so that you need twice as many to carry the same groceries followed by the removal of plastic bags with studier but still flawed and breakable "green" "enviro" bags which are now sold at large profit instead of being given away. Lets nickel and dime our customers to death in the name of the environment - but we couldn't possibly stop filling their mailboxes with dead tree junk mail. Fucking hypocrites!
Now again putting away the dead dolphins and concentrating on the costs of landfill and the belief that you don't want to live in a socialist country this switch again makes sense. What you are given a choice between is a poor product for free (socialism) or paying a market price for something that lasts longer and has more value (capitalism). So its not enviromental nutters its just plain old capitalism at work.
3) Solar hot water systems that cost more environmentally and financially to produce, install, run maintain than their conventional counterparts, often require that they be supplemented/boosted by a conventional heater (so net negative gain in terms of production). Honest it's not about selling shit people don't need!
Now the Solar hot water systems I know about (for instance the ones that I've seen down here in Australia) are definately nothing like this and are for large parts of the year totally self sustaining. Some of them are pretty damn technically simple (black pipes on the roof) with very little cost of production. If you aren't forced to use these however what is your problem? Its capitalism at work again, the latest Ferrari is a ruddy expensive car, has rubbish amounts of space and sits only two people, why on earth would people pay over the odds when they could just get a truck? The majority of solar water systems sold in the right markets (i.e. hot countries) and geothermal systems in the right countries (e.g. Iceland) are much cheaper to run than conventional systems, sure some people put the system in the wrong place (e.g. a solar system in Ireland) but those things happen all the time. Still I could generously give you that some environmental people are a bit silly (David Cameron and his windmill springs to mind).
4) Water conservation and rationing. What a fucking joke. It's got nothing to do with environmental impact of building more dams and desalination plants and everything to do with the dollars it takes to do so. Water is not scarce on this planet. It recycles well if you don't abuse it badly with extremely noxious chemicals. The system is build to deal with the shit and piss of every creature on the planet. Anything short of sewage and noxious chemicals often can be reused if we weren't so skitish about grey water. Water as a scarce resource, and kids no longer being able to play in their back yards with a hose has nothing to do with environment and everything to do with politicians lining their pockets with taxes that should be spent on infr
This should actually be more or less common sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:3, Insightful)
The question isn't whether climate change will destroy all life. It won't. The question is "Will humans be able to sustain the complex civilization we have built in the face of rapid changes in the natural systems that presently support it?"
Re:Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:4, Insightful)
"The main reason that population control goes all wacky, is when you run the numbers, EVERY man, woman and child could live in the state of Texas, with NOBODY else on the planet ... and that is with everyone having about 1200 sq ft around them. Start grouping people into families, and the size needed to hold everyone gets smaller. Now, just start going up ... you get the picture."
An individual human needs more than 1200 square feet of space just to sustain life. Your argument is ridiculous, and I suspect you pasted it from the internets. Consider checking snopes.com before posting again.
Re:Except that (Score:2, Insightful)
Normally, I don't respond to people who have to hide behind being anonymous, but in this case I'll make an exception.
Your email is hidden and I did not see a real name. What makes you not anonymous?
Totally flawed "study" (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but that "meat" is animal byproducts that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Nobody but the family dog or cat is going to eat beef lips, eyelids, rendered gristle, etc.
Also, they leave out the cost of manufacture. How much does it cost to manufacture a car, and also to build and maintain the related infrastructure (roads, snow clearing, etc) compared to the cost of producing a dog?
Then throw in the environmental impact of consumables. Gallons of toxic antifreeze, tens or hundreds of gallons of windshield washer literally sprayed all over the environment, contaminated waste engine oil and transmission fluid, etc., asbestos from brake dust and clutch linings, - toxic waste, compared to the organic fertilizer Fido produces from what would otherwise be scrap food.
Contrary to the "study", Fido does NOT eat prime chicken - he gets the left-overs off the carcass, the table scraps, etc., that would otherwise just add up to more organic waste. As such, Fido also reduces the rat problem at landfills, as well as converting waste food into fertilizer if you have a compost heap.
Also, when you need a new car, you have to fork out big bucks. Need a new dog? They can make their own replacements, and you can get pretty much any "pure-bred" for free. I've gotten 2 Newfoundlanders for free (one from a local dog rescue, one as a reward for keeping a lost mutt for two months until the original owners were found, and a St. Bernard for $125 (she was less than a buck a pound, if you're into pricing meat) at the local dog pound. And a wolf, again for free.
You can eat my dogs when you pry their leash from my cold dead hands. But make it a fair fight - both of you naked, armed with nothing but your teeth and claws. My money's on the dogs.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:2, Insightful)
The environmental impact of all the workers who built the car (and their dogs) is included in the price.
Re:Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate to tell you, but one individual human requires substantially more resources than one individual insect. Furthermore, individual insects have specialized resources needs but insects as a whole can live in a much more diverse set of living conditions and can consume a much more diverse set of resources.
I have no idea why you would bring up the population of insects. It's among the most ridiculous arguments I've ever heard seriously presented.
I don't know of a good way to stop overpopulating the earth that is also ethical, other than to just suggest to people to please not have many kids, and to get rid of government support structures which promote having children -- though even that runs afoul of ethical concerns, because the same support structures which promote having children are often important if a child is had anyway.
Also, 1200 sq. ft. is pretty much living quarters (btw, I come to 1150 sq. ft. after running the numbers). You aren't going to grow food on that, or generate electrical power, or manufacture goods, or process water, or put down roads (or even paths for walking/bicycles, but you're going to need more than paths to ship the goods required to survive). A single fire is going to take out all of this supertexas, and most other disasters will knock out significant portions of it.
So, I know your point wasn't to just shove everybody in texas, but just to illustrate that there's plenty of space. But the thing is, yes we could use our space more efficiently, but no, you really haven't illustrated anything. You need to work out how much total land every person needs to maintain a certain lifestyle, and how much of earth's surface is suitable for this, and maybe you can break down into subparts to squeeze some extra land out -- eg. humans need X sq. ft. arable land and Y sq. ft. land with nearby freshwater and Z sq. ft. in the vicinity of a power supply and W sq. ft. contiguous and habitable, etc.. Then, equal to your demand of a method for reducing Earth's human population, you have to provide a method by which humans can be arranged efficiently into this pattern.
I live alone in a place twice that big (but somewhat vertical -- probably about 1200 sq. ft. footprint). I'm well aware that living alone in a place this size is not very environmentally conscious of me, but I'd rather not shrink that down.
With all that said, you seemed to be hinting at arcologies, and I think they are a workable idea which attacks the problem of overpopulation by increasing Earth's capacity rather than decreasing our consumption of that capacity -- attempting to solve the same problem.
Re:Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:2, Insightful)
Shit like this wouldn't fly with a sane rationed well educated public:
1) Compulsory replacement of lightbulbs with more expensive technology "for the environment" (no it's not just because there's a huge profit to be made selling new technology at 20x the price, honest it's not). Never mind that LED technology has much more potential.
When you add in the cost of electricity, incandescent lighting is, in most cases, far more expensive than CFL lighting. Consumers don't seem to be able to take this in and make rational decisions about it. At 10c per KWH a 100W bulb that lasts 2000h will cost $20 over its lifetime in electricity. A 20W CFL which has roughly the same light output will cost $4 in electricity over the same time and should last a lot longer. Actual lifetimes do vary and do make a difference to the calculation, but in almost all cases CFLs come out a lot cheaper. The trouble is that consumers see a $1 pricetag of an incandescent light compared to a $5 pricetag of a CFL so the incandescent looks cheaper.
I don't think banning incandescent bulbs is the optimal solution, but if the public was fully informed, sane and rational nobody would be buying incandecents and rules to ban them wouldn't be needed.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh? It consumes approximately the same amount of natural resources as if you didn't prepare too much food and throw it away and instead spent that saving on food more suited to the dogs digestive system.. In fact you might even make a saving because dog food is often based on discarded cuts of meat, intestines, eyeballs, ground up bone, offal etc that was unsaleable as human food..
Re:Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't. CFL's have made good financial and environment sense for well over a decade now, at least in most lighting applications. Unless you need a bulb with a wide dimmable range or some other fairly exotic use, CFL's will always cost out as the cheapest option. The bulbs themselves aren't even that expensive anymore - at IKEA they don't cost much more than standard incandescents do at my local grocery store.
If you live in a warm climate CFL's have another big advantage - they don't heat your room the way incandescent bulbs do. That can really reduce the load on your air conditioner, saving you even more money. And if you have light fixtures in hard to reach areas, they really cut down on the need to change your bulbs. I've had some CFL bulbs in use in the same fixtures now for almost a decade.
LED technology looks promising, but it still isn't as cheap as CFL. Will probably get there though sometime in the next decade.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Meat, as a whole, is incredibly inefficient. The most inefficient is beef...
That is pretty much entirely untrue outside the US, where people seem to think that cows can eat grain. They can't eat grain, and most of it gets shat out largely undigested. Cows eat grass. They have four stomachs which help them digest tough nutrient-poor grass. Sheep have two stomachs, for much the same reason. I, on the other hand, have only one stomach and that's been tweaked by millenia of evolution to break down a mixure of fairly soft plants with not much cellulose and meat.
It's far more efficient to put some sheep into a field and let them graze and then eat the sheep, than it is for me to try to work out some way to eat grass. It's also worth pointing out that very little of what farm animals eat is actually wasted. One of the best ways to compost tough grasses is to pass them through a ruminant's digestive system. You get out lots of shit that you can then spread on fields and help your vegetables grow.
The final point is that it's not really useful to talk about turning the world's farmland over to arable farming. It works where you've got hundreds of acres of gently-rolling countryside and you can actually plough it without your tractor rolling sideways down a hill or disappearing into a hundred-metre-deep bog. It does not work where the vast majority of farms are hill farms, which are more suited to grazing animals. I know this might be hard for people in the US to comprehend, but not all farms are rolling Iowa cornfields.
hm (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Hop on green bandwagon
2. Use unsubstantiated/flawed maths
3. ????
4. Profit
Augh! Really bad energy math! (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried feeding my dog gasoline, and I tried putting Purina in my gas tank. Now I've got to go see both the mechanic and the vet, but I'm not sure who should see which patient... This is a classic case of apples and oranges. You can't freely exchange food energy and fuel energy in today's society, so it's meaningless to compare their energy costs.
When you look at the calculation in detail, they work out the amount of farmland per dog (0.83 hectares), then convert the amount of energy used by an SUV into acres of land, by using THE INTENSITY OF SUNLIGHT on that land surface. So yeah, if we had solar-powered cars that worked at 100% efficiency, their calculation makes sense. Otherwise, it's rubbish.
Here's a better calculation: The U.S. has 1.5 hectares of farmland per capita. If every family of 4 owned one big dog, we'd be devoting 15% of our farmland to feeding pets. It's a noticeable chunk of our food resource, but it's not an SUV.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's a "phone book?"
Seriously, the Internet is finally killing off phone books, especially the Yellow Pages. Advertisers have learned that it's more cost-effective to take out the smallest yellow pages ad possible, and just put their web site url in it. AND not to bother with the overpriced "portal" offers.
Also, the White Pages phone books are becoming obsolete, since so many people have cell phones nowadays.
Your comment has prompted me to send the following email to Yellow Pages Group [mailto]:
I get enough junk mail as is ... at least SOME of the junk mail is useful ... but neither the Yellow Pages nor the White Pages gets looked at any more. They're a total waste of time, energy, and resources, and as outmoded as buggy whips. Next step - lobbying my municipality to add a "recycling surtax" on junk mail over a certain weight (this would survive a court challenge, since it's not an outright ban on all junk mail). I don't have a fireplace, so why would I want a phone book?
Re:OMG (Score:3, Insightful)
News flash: There are PLENTY of resources for everyone, if only we weren't wasteful and/or greedy.
Assuming that's true now it won't be true for long as population keeps growing exponentially.
At best your plant eating solution will keep humanity from facing the real problem for another few years.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This article is crap... Notice the following:
>>Professor Vale says the title of the book is meant to shock, but the couple, who do not have a cat or dog, believe the reintroduction of non-carnivorous pets into urban areas would help slow down global warming.
Ah yes, "the I don't have this and thus nobody else should have this green peace tree hugging idiot" crowd. I get annoyed by these people because they are hypocrites. They will be all nice, green and free love, UNTIL you touch something they happen to like.
What I really don't like about this study is the benefit animals like dogs have. Time and time it has proven that those that have dogs or cats have better lives. I am not saying you need to have dogs or cats, but those that do are better for it. Also dogs have been with mankind for thousands of years because there is a symbiotic relationship. As I write this my Ye old English Bulldogs are sleeping at my feet.
So what does these dogs do for me?
1) Force me to walk them everyday ensuring that I am outside doing something.
2) A jogging partner making my jog not so boring.
3) A watchdog (not guard dog) who keeps an eye on things.
4) Fire alert in case something is burning and they will make sure we get to safety.
Essentially, a dog helps me lower my carbon footprint because I exercise more and use the car less since by being healthier I will bike, walk, or take public transportation.
I guess those benefits did not fit into their study? But why should it have because after all they don't "own" a dog or cat...
IDIOTS!
Re:Good grief.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except for horses. There won't be any meaningful limits on horse owners.
Well, horses are one of the few "pets" we do eat after all.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OMG (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, we have cut down half the rain forests, paved over, through, and around half the planet, sprawled our cities and homes through the habitat of countless animal species, destroyed the ozone layer, polluted the oceans... and you think _steak_ is the problem? How about we quit having babies until we reduce the worlds population from 7 billion to 1 billion, and eat all the steak we want! I think a billion people would probably be more than enough (and we can engineer them all to be smarter while we are at it).
Re:Good grief.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why even bother looking at this stuff.. there's all kinds of other areas that could realistically be addressed.
All I can figure is that they are doing it for the shock value. Reasonable ways of reducing one's carbon footprint just don't get the kind of attention this husband and wife team seems to crave.
Brenda and Robert Vale are architects, and with the economy being as it is, it does make sense for them to look outside their profession for ways to make some money during these slack times. However they have made one of the classic mistakes of persons who are highly trained but poorly educated: they thought they could impose the logic they know upon realms where they don't have a clue, and somehow astound and impress, and get a lot of press and sell a lot of books. But they instead are going to end up as laughingstocks, and to such a degree that it is going to affect their career as architects. For who is going to trust the designs of idiots who don't do their homework before publishing?
Their numbers are way off base. I own a 110 lb German Shepherd: he is a very large dog. He consumes 260 kg per year (almost 2 lb per day between his one meal and 2 to 4 dog biscuits).
Brenda and Robert are talking about a "medium size dog", which would be like a standard collie or one of the common spaniel breeds weighing in around 30 - 40 lb. But these two are architects and seemingly not dog people, so maybe they actually mean something like a large Doberman or a big Labrador, weighing 50 lb. They really expect even this larger dog to eat as much (259 kg/yr) as my very large 110 lb German Shepherd? Well, maybe that accounts for some of the waddling woofers I see around town. But using the morbidly obese as representatives of a species doesn't work. They need to develop some truthier statistics.
Brenda and Robert also have their numbers reversed: a healthy diet for a pet dog is one third meat and meat byproducts and two thirds cereals and veggies. They have got it the other way around. Maybe they mistook the diet that a working sled dog needs in the middle of the Arctic winter for a pet's diet.
So they got neither the total amount right, nor the proportion right. But those are small errors, compared to the big one:
A pet's diet has a negligible carbon footprint no matter how much Butterball gets to eat. First, none of the pet's food is coming directly from petrochemicals; the carbon involved is already in the biosphere, just cycling through as part of dog for a while. This of course is not the case for the SUV. Second, the animal portion of pet food is derived from meat scraps and byproducts that would otherwise go directly into the waste stream. The cereal portion is often from lots that do not meet human food quality standards for one reason or another (too many bugs per cubic foot, too much evidence of rodent droppings, etc). Pets actually reduce the environmental impact of slaughterhouses, chicken ranches, and grain handlers by providing an alternative use path for stuff that isn't fit for human consumption.
Now if Brenda and Robert wanted to do a fair comparison of the environmental impacts of SUVs and of pets, they could compare the amount of diesel each consumes over its lifetime.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about emissions ? (Score:4, Insightful)
RE: people not scooping after their pets - demand higher fines. As a dog owner, I would welcome a fine of $3,000 plus temporary confiscation of the dog, along with boarding fees for one month for people who don't poop-and-scoop. Offer the dog up for adoption, and if someone else adopts the dog during that month, too bad, sucks 2 be U, maybe you'll pick up next time.
RE: runoff - pig farms and crop fertilizer are much bigger culprits.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you believe in the theory of evolution? If so, why? The theory is quite incomplete and there could be many other factors that influenced/influence the development of different species. Do you believe in Big Bang cosmology? If so, why? The theory is quite incomplete and there are many other factors that certainly could have made the universe turn out the way that it has. Unless you happen to be a cosmologist or an evolutionary scientist, all (sane) people really have to go on to form your opinion about these things is what you learn the general consensus among those researching in the fields in question is. I don't think that many members of the Slashdot community question the theory of evolution or the Big Bang theory of cosmology. I certainly don't think many educated people would accuse these scientists in engaging in a conspiracy to tilt the evidence in favor of these theories.
Now, along come climatologists with their data pointing to anthropogenic global warming, and some in the Slashdot community, which ordinarily seems to have great respect for scientists and the scientific method, suddenly not only knows more about the subject than those doing the research but also makes thinly veiled accusations of hidden agendas and scientific malpractice. I'll tell you why this is so - it's all political. It is because if anthropogenic global warming is real than the medicine is obvious - massive government intervention on a scale unprecedented in human history. It's tough medicine to swallow for any freethinking person, but for some it's such an anathema that it's better to try to ignore or discredit the messengers than listen to the message. Because if the message is successfully ignored, and the models of climate scientists are correct, the real horror show for Libertarian types begins 25-50 years from now when governments start to act in a panic; never a good frame of mind for governments to be in when it come to the rights of citizens. At that stage civil liberties will be the last thing on the minds of governments as they try to deal with city-killing hurricanes, severe droughts, crop failures, coastal flooding, resource wars, refugees everywhere, and generally trying to salvage something from a world literally going to hell.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead of trowing it away, you could not prepare it in the first place.
From an environmental point of view what this means is less food produced and processed with all the extra things we do to get that food on our plate (and then give to the animals)
I buy in general enough food to not go hungry, but if I would have a dog and that should live from the leftovers, I am sure I will be arrested for animal cruelty.
Your dog does not give back in fertilizer all the extra energy used to get that food on your plate.
And although I think the idea is far fetched, It will come to some very nice discussions in the pub when somebody attacks me for not taking public transport and drive around for fun in the weekend, while he has 2 dogs. :-D
Re:Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since about 1970 the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 300ppm its now up around 370-380 ppm. In that time there hasn't been a significant increase in natural production of CO2 and an overall increase of CO2 by about 33%. That is a no minuscule amount. While your assertion that the natural world produces a lot more carbon dioxide than humans do is correct you are not taking into account that the natural world in general also sinks that carbon dioxide. The amount that humans produce doesn't need to be that big it just has to be big enough to unbalance the system.
Re:Except that (Score:2, Insightful)
But are they happier?
They're birds you fuckwit. For most animals at that level, survival and health = happiness. It seems like you can't empathize with animals without anthropomorphizing them, which isn't horrible per se because it at least keeps you from microwaving frogs or pulling legs off spiders, but it does mean that you're basing your values on flawed, childish principles, which makes you do stupid shit like apply Maslow's hierarchy of needs to a creature with a walnut-sized brain that evolved from dinosaurs. Hate to disappoint you, but cockatiels don't give a shit about "self-actualization," unless you define it as lots of yogurt-covered raisins and other birds to fuck.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's not easy, but I like eating fish, and there's plenty of scientific research out there that humans do better on diets that include fish (live longer, less depression etc). If regulation continues to be poor, lots of fishes will go extinct.
Yes it may raise the cost of fishing, but the "small time" fishermen in my country appear to still manage to scrape a living (albeit with some subsidies). So it might actually do them a big favour if the fishing industry stops being able to just "strip mine" the ocean, kill and discard stuff that their onboard canning factory doesn't have labels for.
Re:Environmentalism means losing your mind (Score:3, Insightful)
. Someone with 6 stupid and aggressive kids who end up killing or causing the 2 carefully nurtured kids of a high-investment parent to move away "wins" genetically speaking, even if 2 of his kids end up dead or in jail.
If that were true, we'd never have made it out of the trees. The more intelligent family is going to do better and be better at avoiding the thuggery. Brains, not braun are the main reason the human species has thrived. Plenty of stronger creatures exist. None use tools, speach, and their minds like we do.
Re:Except that (Score:3, Insightful)
Your email is hidden and I did not see a real name. What makes you not anonymous?
They've got an identity (the slashdot login "davmoo") which you know maps to a particular person, and you can reasonably address remarks to that person (e.g., through the use of this forum). You just can't (easily) discover the map from the identity you have to the person. If they were truly anonymous, you would have no identity at all instead of one with a hidden map.
For example, you're anonymous. That means I have no idea at all which of the billions of people on the planet made the comment. But if davmoo makes another comment, I can see that and correlate it with the others that he's made.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we continue raising cattle for meat because they are delicious.
Re:More Pollution is Better (Score:4, Insightful)
Upping the atmosphere's CO2 content will just encourage plants and bacteria that thrive on CO2, and the system will pull itself back into line.
Eventually, sure. No guarantee that humanity or our civilization will survive in the meantime. And to be fair, I'm not too bothered about the planet itself, but I do rather have a vested interest in human civilization continuing.
Re:interesting responses (Score:3, Insightful)
After she was discharged , I was criticizing the family for having a 100lb carnivore that was bred for aggression living in the house with their 4 year old child. One of my co-workers got really angry at me, saying "we don't know that that child did to provoke the dog! Did you even ask that?" She blamed the kid and sided with the dog. I was dumbfounded. It fascinates me that people can work alongside one another and have profoundly divergent value systems.
With incredibly few exceptions, that literally make the news because they're so shockingly unusual, dogs don't just randomly mutilate their family/pack members. With incredibly few exceptions, untrained kids will randomly provoke dogs until taught how to behave.
You are looking in the rear view mirror, not planning for the future.
By your plan, removing the family dog but not training the child, in the future the child will die when it inevitably harasses an even larger stronger dog, and that dog won't have any mercy because it is not part of the family "pack". By your co workers plan, in the future, the child will live because it will understand how to properly handle a dog, or at least how not to get hurt by a dog. I'm sure your co worker thinks you're just as crazy as you think they are.
Interestingly, in your post, neither of you blame the family for not teaching the kid to properly handle a dog, which in a world full of pet dogs, is pretty much a mandatory learned skill, unless you enjoy stitches/death.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Eating nothing but rabbit will give you protein poisoning.
Combine it with vegetables and other meat, and you'll be fine.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:1, Insightful)
There might be no industry in history that so consistently shoots itself in the head the way commercial fishing does. Learn about the waste endured to catch those shrimp and then go to a typical chain seafood restaurant and see how much people throw away on the front end.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see the irony at all. It's not about quantity. It's about quality.
What next? The nunmber of lines of code makes a computer program good? Or the number of words make a book good? Similarly it's not the number of laws, or the amount of Government.
If the law is bad, fix it.
> who are you to force anyone to do anything
Forcing people to do stuff is the business of Governments. Governments must maintain a monopoly on force.
I'm pointing out the problem and it should be fixed. If people have better ideas of how it should be fixed, by all means go ahead and fix it that way. As you yourself have pointed out the present system is badly broken.
I'm all for a free market, but a well regulated free market.
> Tell us what industry you're in so we can start discussing "forcing" you to do various things
Why should I tell you what industry I'm in so that you can launch a personal attack that's likely to be off topic and a waste of time? Just so that you can feel good about yourself? Why don't you go and pleasure yourself in other ways.
Re:Except that (Score:3, Insightful)
He's pseudonymous, not anonymous.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:3, Insightful)
Says who? The environment is not king of everything, people. Our laws are still superior to what insulated people in the city say animals want. You may think that the environment is top priority, but it's not, really. I'd venture to say that most people who go around all day thinking about the whales or the algea or whatever wacko cause of the week are people who already have their needs and personal whims catered to.
I honestly think these people would think differently if they moved to the rural areas of America (or whatever country), and had to earn a living by their own sweat. In truth, farmers are pretty conservative people, politically or environmentally. The things the enviroworshippers hate are actually in their own beloved cities.
Re:More Pollution is Better (Score:3, Insightful)
The system will be just fine. It will continue operating at a higher CO2 level. Alongside that, it will have different weather patterns, average temperature, sea level, ocean acidity, rainfall patterns, and other changes. Many of those changes will be incompatible with the survival of some species. For us, though, they're merely incompatible with the way we're used to living -- where we have our major cities, our farmland, etc. Adapting to the changes would be neither easy nor pleasant.
The fact that the Earth will continue onward with a new balance does not mean we would much like that new balance.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans and dogs originally got together because there was a mutual benefit. That benefit hasn't existed for a very long time.
I agree with everything else you said, but from observing dog owners there's still a mutual benefit. The dog makes the owner happy.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Rabbits are food.
Bunnies are pets.
Re:Good grief.. (Score:3, Insightful)
As I point out in other comments, I own the bird unintentionally. Here's the full story for those who [apparently] care: My last girlfriend is into pets and bought three parrots; First this Sun Conure from some people who decided they didn't have time for her any more, then an abused Citron Cockatoo that bit me in the face, then a Patagonian Conure which was the winning bird. This came right after her failure with chinchillas, whose cages she was too lazy to clean, and they all died. When she decided that a future wasn't sexy and she wanted to have one-night-stands with deadbeats, one of whom knocked her up and dumped her immediately thereafter like I told her he would, we broke up and I took the Sun Conure because it had bonded with me and I am not such an asshole that I would subject a bird on the upswing to that kind of punishment a second time. She has maybe 10 years left on her clock, probably more like 5, and I am kind enough to let them run out. However, I would never go to a pet store or even to a breeder and get a bird. I am not a pet person. The bird loves me, I can't help but love her back, and I don't intend to eat her; she'd barely make an appetizer. I'm doing my best to keep her impact low, e.g. we [organically] grew a bunch of sunflowers this year, and they will provide a substantial part of her feed.
Of course your diatribe does bring up a key point, who has more right to live a German Shepard pup born in a Western Country or a baby born in drought ridden Africa?
The right to life is a pipe dream. No government actually believes in it, or they would do more to try to prevent your death. If we had a right to life, we'd be immortal. So, neither has more right to live, but a human who chooses a dog over a human is simply not a very good human. They might, however, be a better denizen of Earth.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Environmentalist nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be here, 'cause what I'm getting there is that property ownership rights in that case belong to whoever has the most firepower. I personally wouldn't be inclined to think of that as a good thing....
Re:Good grief.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, while vegetarian humans may have a seemingly lower environmental impact, everyone seems to forgetting the impact of all the supplements that they have to take, because the human body is evolved as an omnivore and thus needs various things we cannot get from a vegetable diet.
Re:Except that (Score:3, Insightful)
In meatspace, putting your name behind something can involve a risk (popularity, safety, legality, etc.) but doing so usually make the statement stronger than doing the same thing anonymously, without that risk. To quote Jack Beauregard, "If the risk is little, the reward is little."
Similarly in Slashdot he took a risk by putting his karma on the line to back up his statement. His pseudonym may not be linked to his physical identity, but it's still an identity that has value. Posting AC doesn't have that risk, and so it's less likely to be read or taken as seriously.
Oh, please (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAV (I am not a vegan/vegetarian). But this is a bit much. About the only nutrient you really can't get in sufficient quantity from a vegan diet is B12. And I'm pretty sure you could provide a lifetime supply of B12 to the entire planet for the environmental cost of a single year's consumption of meat.
Re:Except that (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you not anonymous?
Google.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:3, Insightful)
Tons of perfectly edible fish are wasted and killed. Many of the discarded fishes are sold on the market for decent prices, they just happen to be landed by the "wrong boat".
Well, nothing edible tossed into the ocean in or near fishing areas is "wasted"... SOMETHING is going to eat that little "fillet o fish from heaven". You think all those birds are circling the boat because they admire the decor? Or, if the birds don't get it, that the food cast aside will just sink to the bottom and rot? If the fishing industry was not forced to toss aside this stuff, the "bycatch" would become much greater, due to profitable accidents. Also, things like shrimp would be "accidentally" taken out of season, when prices should be higher for them.
The way it is now the bycatch is wasted labor for the crew and owner, and that's the incentive that keeps it as low as possible. I do think that fishing areas with unacceptably high bycatch ratios should be off limits... and that shrimp caught in nets have an inexcusably inefficient yield to bycatch ratio in light of the fact that you can raise the damn things in ponds.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember how there was that big deal about the first woman winning the Nobel prize for economics? It's a shame that the fact that she has a vag overshadowed her research, which showed [huffingtonpost.com] that the people using a common resource can better manage that resource than a government.
The bar for entry for a Nobel prize is admittedly low these days, but Elinor Ostrom's findings warrant your own investigation, assuming you can get over your prior assumptions.
Re:Huge wastage (Score:1, Insightful)
You are correct regarding fish sizes. For example, catching only large fish has been shown to cause fish to evolve into smaller adults (as only small adults would be confused with young fish). Also, a large fish may produce a magnitude more offspring than a smaller, adult fish.
Regarding consumption of fish, just make sure to eat sardines and small crap like that, not tuna and salmon. Reasons:
1. large fishes will be extinct in no-time thanks to human over consumption :)
2. fish farms are fed sardines and other small crap caught in the wild which doesn't make farmed salmon (most these days thanks to overfishing) any better than wild regarding our impact on the oceans
3. thanks to coal fire plants, most water bodies in the world, including oceans, are contaminated by mercury - eat lots of sushi, tuna and salmon, and you'll be in the checkout lane waiting for new kidneys
4. smaller fish (like sardines) have less pollution in them overall
5. sardines probably will not go extinct as long as there is food for them in oceans - think "trillions of sardines"
And finally, fisherman are heavily subsidized! The situation is much worse than with regular farming subsidies (in most countries). Fishing is badly regulated and resource over exploited. Fishing is a classic example of Tragedy of the Commons (another is air/water quality and climate change :P
Re:Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:1, Insightful)
May I suggest it's the other way around? ...)
Theory of evolution - theory of Big Bang: far less incomplete than you imply, there are NOT MANY other "factors" that could have mad the universe turn out the way it has, in fact almost all other "factors" have been eliminated by experimentation/observation, and both theories have made predictions that have been later spectacularly confirmed (say the CMB or the existence and probable location of tiktaalik).
On the other hand, FUD around global warming provides an otherwise inexistent support for "massive government intervention on a scale unprecedented in human history", which is something many of us definitely DO NOT WANT, simply because it is a BAD IDEA (TM). Your own post is an excellent example of the things we fear: in a heartbeat you move from "anthropogenic global warming", which is something for which we have reasonably good data to conclude it is in fact happening, to city-killing hurricanes, severe droughts, crop failures, etc., for which there are NO RELIABLE MODELS OF PREDICTION. Look at any report on climate change, they all seem very precise on recounting the observed warming, as they should be, giving you numbers and precise rates of change with a few decimal positions, but are a lot more vague when issuing predictions, often with a range of variability of 100% (an "eyeball" guesstimate of "2 to 4 feet" for a lay person might be OK, but the same thing from a scientist is absolutely unacceptable; can you imagine a scientist saying that water boils at "100 or 200 degrees centigrade"??) and citing NO LEVELS OF CONFIDENCE (you know, the second number in a scientific prediction, as in "water will raise between 1.8 and 2.2 feet in the next 10 to 12 years WITH A CONFIDENCE OF 95%"
So here is the problem global warming FUDDERS face: one Katrina doesn't prove "city-killing" hurricanes, while all the hurricanes that are NOT Katrina and all the cities that have not been killed by an hurricane DO DISPROVE THEM (it's just the way science works: counter-examples kill theories, while consistent events only lend them some support but don't "prove" them); severe droughts are not happening, crops are not failing, coasts are not flooding and the resource wars and refugees predate climate change for a few milennia.
So nope, we don't need to deny "it", what "we" need to do is refine the models so that predictions can be observed and confirmed or disproved, BEFORE we grant the state so much power that absolutist empires of the past look like democracies in comparison!
Re:Can we finally start denying it again? (Score:1, Insightful)
Q: Does the theory of evolution affect the cost of goods consumed in daily life?
A: Not in my part of the world.
Q: Does Big Bang cosmology affect the cost of goods consumed in daily life?
A: Not in my part of the world.
Q. Does anthropogenic global warming affect the cost of goods consumed in daily life?
A: Definitely, even in my part of the world. Especially so if stuff like Cap and Trade become required by law. It would hit my wallet so I want to be sure that the claims are true.
You just don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Their-government-science and economic rules are HARMFUL, wasteful, they do not work and haven't worked for so long now that it has resulted in vast loss of sea creatures, it has resulted in LESS fish in the sea, not more, and higher prices for what seafood we get, and long range it has near destroyed the fishing industry. It's been way more bureaucratic insane bull than not. It is not "science" at all.
The biggest single positive change they can do is recognize the HARD SCIENCE,(and this is an exact example of where a simple law change would really work) completely verifiable, repeatable, absolutely zero debate, not opinion, real fact, real data, that fishing with nets results in a "variety" catch in multi hundreds of thousands of fishing trips a year, all over the planet, and it should NOT be illegal to bring that catch in and sell it. In fact it should be near required, and sort it out at the docks and fishhouses better.
All of the fish with airbladders die from the bends when you haul them up, but official pseudo science regulations *make believe this doesn't happen*, that if you "throw them back" they go on their merry fish way. They just don't.. Please see my reply here [slashdot.org] as well, my direct observations as a commercial shrimper before, and this was decades ago and the-governments- are still enforcing "throw it all back in except the target fish" and it is still utter complete rubbish junk science.
There is simply no way possible at all to have some sort of artificial intelligence driven nets (or "longline" rigs) that only catch one single target species of a correct size and gender, or any other ridiculous notion like that. They can try and regulate that into existence all day long, using as many laws and words as possible, and it still will not change reality.
And there is just example after example of this sort of insane regulatory mindset that has infested governments and well meaning but totally naive enviro orgs where reality doesn't even come close to their theories. The freakin spotted owl crap is another prime example there of total Agenda 21 style driven rubbish junk science that caused huge loss of jobs and incomes, and did *nothing* at all whatsoever to either increase or decrease the spotted owl populations. It has been proven without any doubt at all that they do not absolutely require virgin old growth forest, they find nests in barns and second growth forests, and that the main reason their numbers were in decline is because of competition from other more aggressive owl species.
Not saying all regulations are bad, of course not, I'd be the first to admit that and am in favor of true scoience based regs, but tons of them are so far into being counter productive as opposed to the stated goals that you have to wonder what other purpose is behind them,* because they have nothing to do with hard science or legitimate best practices, even though their words may claim they do.
*Well, I don't winder at all about it, I'll leave it for "debate", but in the past when I was "in the movement" I have heard personally dot org enviro so called leaders and organizers bragging and discussing "off the record" about their long range political power goals, which are pretty disgusting totalitarian crap and have little to do with saving the environment and a lot to do with having a major global two class society with masters-order givers, and serfs-order takers who have been herded into selected mega cities by overlapping and ridiculous laws that make rural living about impossible, even when they use normal "left wing" styled soothing words and noises.
I no longer would work with or be affiliated with most of the large "enviro" orgs out there, even though I am fairly and honestly "green" myself, and walk my talk with my lifestyle choices, nor do I trust any of their tame politicians who go along with that nonsense, including the upcoming co2 cap and trade world new wall