Skybird
09-09-20, 07:25 AM
No end of narrow-mindedness in sight.
FOCUS reports:
Dogs are considered loyal or playful, but are they polluting the environment? A new study on "man's best friend" comes to exactly this conclusion.
The “best friend of man” an environmental sinner? As a rule, there are other attributes that dog lovers affectionately attribute to their four-legged friends. Loyal or playful, these are fragments of words that are most often picked up on dog walks and walks, but the CO2 emissions of the gigantic Great Dane are seldom the issue.
And it's not that small, as researchers at the Technical University of Berlin have now discovered in a study. A dog weighing 15 kilograms emits around 8.2 tons of CO2 over the course of 13 years of life.
"The 8.2 tons of CO2 correspond to 13 return flights from Berlin to Barcelona or almost the amount that is emitted in the production of a luxury car in the middle class, such as a Mercedes C250," says Prof. Dr. Matthias Finkbeiner, who led the study.
Dogs: Food as a major driver of CO2
According to the researchers, the choice of feed has a particular impact on the climate balance. Because in the vast majority of cases, industrially produced cheap meat ends up in the food bowls - it may be cheap, but it is hardly environmentally friendly.
“The meat for dog food production probably comes neither from the organic farm in the Uckermark nor from the Bavarian alpine meadows. It comes from factory farming with the known social and ecological effects, ”says Finkbeiner.
Animals: Dog excrement pollutes water and soil
The animal excrement also has an impact on the environmental impact. Because of the rubbish, more phosphorus and nitrogen get into water and heavy metals into the soil. The former promotes the growth of harmful algae and can cause bodies of water to tip over. According to the study, an average dog excretes around a ton of faeces and almost 2000 liters of urine over its 13 years of life.
The type of dog is also decisive for the ecological balance. Similar to the car: the smaller the dog, the better for the environment. An animal weighing 7.5 kilograms emits three tons of C02 over eight years, and a dog weighing 30 kilograms causes significantly more. With a service life of 18 years, the value here is 19 tons.
Dogs: A third of a dog owner's CO2 budget is already consumed by the animal
The study gains particular relevance with a view to the human CO2 footprint: “If you put these 630 kilograms of CO2 in relation to the two tons that every person can emit per year because, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they are still tolerable for the climate, then you have to every dog owner should realize that almost a third of their CO2 budget is already consumed by the dog. "
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And then all of the wildlife! There is only one thing that can help: for the war against global warming, all wild animal populations must be culled!
FOCUS reports:
Dogs are considered loyal or playful, but are they polluting the environment? A new study on "man's best friend" comes to exactly this conclusion.
The “best friend of man” an environmental sinner? As a rule, there are other attributes that dog lovers affectionately attribute to their four-legged friends. Loyal or playful, these are fragments of words that are most often picked up on dog walks and walks, but the CO2 emissions of the gigantic Great Dane are seldom the issue.
And it's not that small, as researchers at the Technical University of Berlin have now discovered in a study. A dog weighing 15 kilograms emits around 8.2 tons of CO2 over the course of 13 years of life.
"The 8.2 tons of CO2 correspond to 13 return flights from Berlin to Barcelona or almost the amount that is emitted in the production of a luxury car in the middle class, such as a Mercedes C250," says Prof. Dr. Matthias Finkbeiner, who led the study.
Dogs: Food as a major driver of CO2
According to the researchers, the choice of feed has a particular impact on the climate balance. Because in the vast majority of cases, industrially produced cheap meat ends up in the food bowls - it may be cheap, but it is hardly environmentally friendly.
“The meat for dog food production probably comes neither from the organic farm in the Uckermark nor from the Bavarian alpine meadows. It comes from factory farming with the known social and ecological effects, ”says Finkbeiner.
Animals: Dog excrement pollutes water and soil
The animal excrement also has an impact on the environmental impact. Because of the rubbish, more phosphorus and nitrogen get into water and heavy metals into the soil. The former promotes the growth of harmful algae and can cause bodies of water to tip over. According to the study, an average dog excretes around a ton of faeces and almost 2000 liters of urine over its 13 years of life.
The type of dog is also decisive for the ecological balance. Similar to the car: the smaller the dog, the better for the environment. An animal weighing 7.5 kilograms emits three tons of C02 over eight years, and a dog weighing 30 kilograms causes significantly more. With a service life of 18 years, the value here is 19 tons.
Dogs: A third of a dog owner's CO2 budget is already consumed by the animal
The study gains particular relevance with a view to the human CO2 footprint: “If you put these 630 kilograms of CO2 in relation to the two tons that every person can emit per year because, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they are still tolerable for the climate, then you have to every dog owner should realize that almost a third of their CO2 budget is already consumed by the dog. "
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And then all of the wildlife! There is only one thing that can help: for the war against global warming, all wild animal populations must be culled!