The current climate conference is coming to an end. The vacuity of it all is overwhelming, especially the pronouncements and virtue signaling of Western leaders who are without leadership. Do they get up every morning and feel oppressed at having to go through motions that will have no outcome? Come on: no one in the West is going to give up their goodies, and why should the rest of the world not want the goodies that come from exploitation of the Earth? The conferences, the protests, the disaster scenarios are so much fury sounding. Below is a piece I wrote and published in the New York Sun in 2007. Don't get me wrong: I am all for better use or our Earthly resources. The piece, however, concerns the fatuity of the liberal mindset.
I live in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in the U.S., zipcode 10024, full of people who carry cloth shopping bags, who swear by fluorescent light bulbs, and who think that George Bush is evil for not signing on to the Kyoto Protocol. The neighborhood also ranks high in the nation in the number of pet food deliveries. (The highest is the adjoining zipcode, 10023.) Parents and children now compete for space on the sidewalks and in the parks of the Upper West Side with the owners of medium-sized and large dogs or, increasingly, of multiple small dogs. I wonder if these pet owners have calculated their dog's carbon paw print.
By this I mean the canine variation on "carbon footprint," a concept invented by environmentalists for measuring our energy consumption and, hence, our damage to the environment. The more energy we consume, so it is claimed, the more carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere and, ergo, the more damage to the thermal equilibrium. When we are not being told to hang out our laundry to dry, we are encouraged to visit websites where we can calculate our personal carbon footprint, based on household fuel use and travel. On the larger scale of things, the so-called Carbon Trust in the U.K. is trying to force companies to publish the size of the carbon footprint required to bring their products to market. It is only by submitting to such behavior-modifying protocols, say the environmentalists, that the polar bears, the rain forest, the earth itself can be saved. As with most seemingly well intentioned but trendy projects, one can't help feeling that a great deal of obfuscation and hypocrisy is at work.
I'm not talking about Laurie David (living on Seinfeld royalties while traveling on her private Gulfstream jet to save the planet) or Al Gore (spending $30,000 a year for electricity for his 20-room house with pool), but about my pet-rich neighbors on the Upper West Side. According to the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition, a moderately active 80-lb dog requires 1,955 calories a day, in other words, the energy requirement of a 120-lb woman. A lactating dog of that weight requires 3,900 to 7,800 calories daily. Smaller dogs of, say, 20 pounds, consume energy disproportionate to their weight compared to large dogs: translated, that means two miniature poodles consume more than a small German shepherd. So, when calculating one's carbon footprint, dog owners should add an extra individual (or two or three) to their household size.
While it is true that some of the carbon dioxide released into the environment as a result of the metabolism of pet food is renewable, the energetics required to produce this food fare — the factories, the delivery trucks, the metal for the cans — are often nonrenewable or renewable more in principle than in practice. "Tin" cans, for instance, made of iron, require about half a pound of carbon (in the form of coke) per pound to manufacture. After use, they go to the city dump, where they may or may not be recycled. Even the best metal-recycling systems recover only a fraction of the metal, while using huge amounts of nonrenewable energy in their operation. A dog's natural diet is heavily weighted toward protein, while the fertilizer chemicals required to produce cattle feed or the high-protein legumes and grains that make up some pet foods are highly energy intensive.
Based on a report by MarketResearch.com, the U.S. pet food market is experiencing healthy growth: "marketers continue to convert pet owners to better quality, higher priced, more upscale fare." This glowing report (from October 2006) mentions the "bases" that premium pet food makers manage to cover: among others, natural/organic, fortified/functional, weight control, breed-size specific, and gourmet. People who purchase organic pet food would hardly be so cruel as to leave Fido in a warm apartment in the summer months without air conditioning. Besides eight hours of cool air, don't forget to factor in the TV to keep him company, or the electric lights when he is home alone in the evening. In very round numbers, a single 6000 BTU air conditioner run for eight fihours has the carbon footprint of 15 gallons of gas, which will drive a car for about 300 miles. Over its ten-year life span, a dog enjoying the benefits of air conditioning will consume about 150 gallons of fossil fuel -- and that's assuming the system is operating at 100% efficiency! Don't get me started on cats, who compete with humans in consuming annually millions of tons of various fish varieties from overfished seas.
This exposition is not about animals, however, but about the hypocrisy and willful ignorance of the liberal mindset. After all, what is the point of feeding "natural/organic" food to animals that lick the behinds of other animals, drink from toilets, chew on shoes (dyes and other chemicals in the leather), and sniff up dirty curbs and sidewalks? As with the cloth shopping bags, the fluorescent light bulbs, and the Kyoto Treaty, Upper West Siders want to appear virtuous, all the while polluting the ground under our feet and fouling the air we breathe.
