What an odd response. Did the prior post upset you in some way? Not having dogs and children are both reasonable and moral responses to the climate crisis. Suicide and murder are not.
There is a perspective I see sometimes where some people have elevated environmentalism so high in their value system relative to all else that they end up in a moral position where consuming any resources at all which all living things do is somehow morally unconscionable.
Reasonable environmentalists think humans have as much right to exist and seek joy as any other living being as long as it's done in a sustainable way. We just want people to, you know, maybe walk to work instead of driving sometimes. Don't litter. Push your government to pass laws against pollution.
There are lobbyists and well-funded organizations pushing against any progress on the environment and the existence of extreme views like "you're a horrible person if you —checks notes—have a fucking dog" makes it too easy for those groups to paint all environmentalists as out of touch kooks. That's the last thing we need.
The parent comment described pet ownership as "is among the biggest environmental stupidity I can think of". Call me crazy, but a couple of meaty snacks for Fido is pretty far down the list after, I don't know, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, coral bleaching, acid rain, deforestation, fuel oil, fracking, chemical dumping, nuclear weapons, water table draining, etc.
> Reasonable environmentalists think humans have as much right to exist
There is a right to exist, but not a right to be created. Saying someone should kill themselves and kill some other along the way, is just not acceptable in a normal discussion.
> Call me crazy, but a couple of meaty snacks for Fido is pretty far down the list after
Those meaty snacks make 20% of worldwide meat-consumption. As a country, pets would be the 60th biggest CO2-emitter in the world. Just because there are bigger culprits, doesn't mean that the smaller ones are excused. Moving pets to more friendly foods would have a huge impact on the world.
> There is a right to exist, but not a right to be created.
But the top-level post is advocating adopting shelter animals and the reply was that keeping pets is bad for the environment. Those shelter animals already exist and if they aren't adopted, they will likely be killed. It's the same thing modulo different species.
Why are they not ? This is more of an ethical dilemma. I agree with @ munificient. I could probably list a lot of things that do a lot of bad for the environment.
But making everything hyper-efficient and reducing on EVERYTHING we almost possibly do just takes away our basic freedoms. I'm not saying you're wrong about not having dogs. I have one myself but yeah, you're right. It's like having a child. But I like being able to choose having it or not.
