A UCLA professor isn't saying anyone who cares about the environment should get rid of their beloved pet dog and/or cat.
But he's not not saying that either. It's widely accepted that eating meat is bad for the environment for a number of reasons, and it turns out our pets eat a whole lot of meat—in fact a country comprised only of the US' cats and dogs would place fifth in global meat consumption, according to a press release.
Professor Gregory Okin was interested in the environmental impacts of our pets and—in a paper published Wednesday in PLOS One—calculates that American cats and dogs create about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide per year due to eating meat. That's equivalent to the yearly output of 13.6 million cars. "The numbers are surprisingly large," he tells the Sacramento Bee.
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