How about we keep the cats (indoor) and dogs, and reduce the CO2 impact of crypto and AI? How about muscle cars and trucks, or are they required to keep, umm, body parts at the desired size?

Are you proposing banning children, as they're WAY more impactful on the environment than pets? Domesticated animals? Metal smelting? Power generation w/ carbon rich materials? Producing alcohol? Processing sugar beets/cane?

There's a lot of things we could do to reduce damage to the environment by a more significant amount. Like removing private jets. This story gets pushed every other year, but I always think it's just putting more shit on the common person. Haven't used a straw in years, what more do you want from me.

It's not clear to me that private aviation (2% of total) is more damaging than pet ownership. Is that 2% more or less impactful than the 90 million dogs people own in the US? And 74 million pet cats?

(2021)

More recently: Bad dog? The environmental effects of owned dogs https://www.publish.csiro.au/PC/PC24071 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655440)

The maoist Chinese were opposed to pets for basically the same reason.

Humans emit carbon emissions as well. What they really want to tell you is to stop having kids, but this is a good alternative.