{"id":1025,"date":"2016-02-29T15:03:08","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T19:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/?p=1025"},"modified":"2016-02-29T17:48:01","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T21:48:01","slug":"the-carbon-pawprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/2016\/02\/29\/the-carbon-pawprint\/","title":{"rendered":"The Carbon Pawprint"},"content":{"rendered":"

While gauging my carbon footprint with an online calculator, I look down at my\u00a0bluetick coonhound<\/a>, Elvis, and wonder what his carbon pawprint is. Nearby, his buddy Alice, a black and tan coonhound, snores through it all.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see: They don\u2019t drive; they\u2019ve never flown on airplanes; their trash consists of the one or two plastic bags I use to pick up their poop every day. They each eat two cups daily of high-quality (a code word for \u201cexpensive\u201d) dog food.<\/p>\n

I Google \u201ccarbon footprint of dogs\u201d and am bombarded with a series of responses to a 7-year-old book that claims one pet dog has the same \u201cecological footprint\u201d \u2014 the amount of land needed to produce the energy consumed \u2014 as a large SUV driven 10,000 miles a year. The book was written by two New Zealand professors named Robert and Brenda Vale, and it\u2019s titled: \u201cTime to Eat the Dog?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

I look down at Elvis and think: not tasty.<\/p>\n

Turns out the book devotes only 28 of its 350 pages to pets. The main argument is that the meat consumed by dogs requires a large amount of land to produce. The rest charts all the other areas of our lives that contribute to our ecological footprints. \u00a0Clearly, the dog part is a marketing tool. \u00a0And I think it\u2019s a bunch of BS.<\/p>\n

Elvis\u2019 and Alice\u2019s food has an average animal protein content of less than 25 percent \u2014 depending on what flavor is in stock at my local pet store, that would be salmon, lamb, chicken or beef. But for argument\u2019s sake, and to give the Kiwis a fighting chance, let\u2019s assume my dogs are each eating two cups of raw meat a day, or about one pound each. \u00a0According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), it takes 13.5 kilograms (almost 30 pounds) of carbon to produce and transport one pound of beef. For each dog, that would total 2,168 tons per year. According to the EWG, a large SUV emits about 11,000 tons per year if driven 1,200 miles per month.<\/p>\n

That figure does not include\u00a0the\u00a0footprint of manufacturing that SUV<\/a>\u00a0in the first place, which would make the figure skyrocket. And remember that my dog food calculations are based on a dog eating one pound a day of raw meat. No matter how much my dogs would like to keep a side of beef in the fridge, in truth, their dog food is made of grains, cereals and \u201ctasty\u201d meat byproducts \u2014 meaning the parts of the animal, such as sinew, bones, eyeballs and skin \u2014 that many people wouldn\u2019t touch. So, in effect, my dogs are piggybacking on other people\u2019s carbon footprints by eating the throwaway meat that\u2019s discarded from the steaks and burgers.<\/p>\n

So now Elvis can rest easy, and Alice can continue to snore. I will feed them again in the morning \u2014 and not to myself. As they crunch away, I\u2019ll bask in my superior status as a dog lover, knowing that cat litter often is\u00a0made from\u00a0strip-mined clay<\/a>.\u00a0No joke.<\/p>\n

By Stephen P. Williams MBA ’17 is a published author of both fiction and non-fiction. \u00a0You may follow his musings\u00a0@stephenwilliams<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on TriplePundit.com<\/a> on February 23rd, 2016.<\/p>\n

The Bard MBA in Sustainability<\/a>\u00a0focuses on the business case for sustainability. We train students to see how firms can integrate economic, environmental, and social objectives, the triple Bottom Line, to create successful businesses that build a more sustainable world. Graduates of the Bard MBA Program will transform existing companies, start their own businesses, and pioneer new ways of operating that meet human needs, while protecting and restoring the earth\u2019s natural systems. The Bard MBA is a low-residency program structured around \u201cweekend intensives\u201d with regular online instruction between these residencies. Five of these intensives are held each term: four in the heart of New York City and one in the Hudson Valley. Residencies take place over four days, beginning Friday morning, and ending Monday afternoon.\u00a0Learn more today<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While gauging my carbon footprint with an online calculator, I look down at my\u00a0bluetick coonhound, Elvis, and wonder what his carbon pawprint […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":360,"featured_media":1028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[132,142,18,13,30,150,32,60,44,57],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-stories","tag-bard-mba","tag-bardmba","tag-carbon","tag-climate-change","tag-mba","tag-mba-in-sustainability","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-student-stories","tag-students"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/files\/2016\/03\/3owvg4Hx.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/360"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1038,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions\/1038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}