The need for smarter "Greens"......................or, We'll give up the cats, but never The Dog......

Via Meadia points to this op-ed piece suggesting that our poor planet simply cannot handle all these pesky humans AND their pets ... "Two German Shepherds use more resources just for their annual food needs than the average Bangladeshi uses each year in total."

Walter Russell Mead's crew is not impressed:
Telling people not to own pets is like telling people not to eat meat: it riles the layperson up, and triggers a knee-jerk reaction not just against the specific issue the environmentalist may be advocating for, but for the green movement in general. Sure, our collective impact on the environment would be a lot less if we all went herbivore, or gave up our pet dogs for pet rocks, but that’s never going to happen. And this is worse than a lost cause—it backfires on greens, undermining both their credibility as policy advocates and as rational observers of the human condition. It wastes political capital at a time when the movement’s reservoirs are running dangerously low. We need—and the world deserves—much smarter green thinking than what we’ve got.

The Dog: