The Nanny State and the Carbon Footprint of Pets

I like pets.  Even when I have had a bad day, my dogs enthusiastically welcome me at the door.  Their needs are relatively small.  The National Center for Infectious Disease claims that the bond that you form with your pet may have medical benefits such as decreasing your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, triglyceride levels, and levels of loneliness.  The center also writes that pets can increase opportunities for exercise and socialization.   

(HT Drudge Report)  Isabelle Toussaint and Jurgen Hecker (Yahoo!News) inform us in, "Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man's best friend," that our pets have a huge carbon paw print.

PARIS (AFP) – Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.

But the revelation in the book "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers...

Pet owners should lighten up, after all, hard core environmentalists don't like people either (see, "When Carbon Limits Are Not Enough," or "A Nanny State That Doesn't Like Children).  Toussaint and Hecker further describe the authors of the book and the carbon footprint of a medium sized dog.

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.

Combine the land required to generate its food and a "medium" sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) -- around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4x4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.

"Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.

Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.

I'm sorry but I won't do my dogs in to stop your polar bears from drowning.  If man is altering the climate in a catastrophic way through carbon emissions, and that is a big if (see "Study shows CFCs, cosmic rays major culprits for global warming," On Watts Up With That," for a description of a non-carbon based explanation for man-made global warming.  There are others.) there must be a better way to resolve the problem than upending the world economy and our pet rich lifestyles (see "Nathan Myhrvold's Anti Global Warming Scheme," for one.).
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Waco's Reaction to Ethanol

J.B. Smith, of the Waco Tribune-Herald, describes consumer dissatisfaction with E10 ethanol blended gasoline in,"Ethanol blend makes way to Waco gas stations."  It seems that others are having the same experience and reaction that I had. 

Ethanol blends have quietly made their way to Waco-area gasoline pumps this fall, and that has Bob Potter fuming.

Potter, a retired defense worker who lives in Hewitt, calls the 10 percent ethanol blend a “snake oil concoction” that hurts his gas mileage and maybe his engine.

“I’m not getting my money’s worth,” he said. “I don’t see any difference in price with the ethanol blend. I’m worried about damaging my vehicle, and I’m incensed that I’m paying the same price for less miles per gallon.”

It might be that Potter and I are the only two people that don't like E10 and that gasoline retailers are filling that demand, but Smith provides a more likely explanation.

Refiners have begun selling stations the 10 percent blend, called E10, because of federal laws that require them to ratchet up their ethanol sales nationwide over time. And E15, a 15 percent ethanol blend, may be on the way.

Responding to requests from the ethanol industry, the Environmental Protection Agency this month said it was considering increasing the amount of ethanol that retailers could blend into gasoline to 15 percent. The final decision would come no sooner than May, when the U.S. Department of Energy is to complete tests of whether E15 damages cars. The blend would be recommended only for cars from the 2001 model year and later.

The ethanol industry has sought the new standard, saying the ethanol market needs to expand to avoid overproduction. The industry argues that expanding the market would create an incentive for developing a new generation of ethanol plants that could use grass, corncobs and wood chips.

We are buying it because the federal government under the Bush administration says that we must.  Notice the contorted logic of the ethanol industry: "the market needs to expand to avoid overproduction."  Generally, when a producers find the market glutted, they cut production and price, but not ethanol producers.  They run to Washington and lobby for mandated use. 

Let me be blunt, if my experiences is the mean (my experience is described here), and if environmental benefits are as exaggerated as fuel efficiency, it would be cheaper to close ethanol plants and pay workers to stay home than continue making ethanol.  The only savings in gasoline would come from a decline in demand due to a fall in purchasing power (real income).  Ethanol makes our nation poorer.

Smith then interviews local mechanics and reports some problems but nothing major.  E10 has only been in local markets since October.  My guess is that major problems will occur in the future.  
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Responding to Comments about Ethanol

In response to, "Ethanol as a Gas Additive," in which I questioned the value of ethanol as a fuel additive, Anonymous wrote,

Are you serious? Where do you think jobs for additional gasoline would be located? NOT IN THE UNITED STATES! Ethanol is better for the environment and helping the economy. It's sticking money right back into the U.S. instead of shipping it overseas. Ethanol does provide a lot of good jobs in which we seem to have quite a shortage of right now. So for a few miles you would rather send your money overseas?

My response is too long to fit into the small comment box.  First, thanks for the comment. I am serious about the public’s misguided focus on job creation rather than productivity. Bryan Caplan, the author of “The Myth of the Rational Voter,” calls it the “make work bias.” Before I proceed, I do realize that the economy is in a deep recession and that many are unemployed, including some in my family.  My comments still apply.  Despite occasional recessions, economies from market oriented to socialistic generally have little problem finding jobs for everyone. Wealthy countries are highly productive, poor countries are not.  Both experience periods of high unemployment.  The question should be: how do we increase the productive of our workers? 

Increasing productivity does have costs.  American farmers are so productive that we now have about 2.2 million compared to 15 million a century ago. The “freed” farmers of the last century went on a productivity binge that dramatically raised our standard of living. I placed freed in quotation marks because nobody wants to be "freed" from their occupation. It is a hard, painful process but it is part and parcel of economic growth through rising productivity.

I have no problem with the production of ethanol so long as it is produced without a dime of taxpayer money. If it is a good product, meaning that it has as much as or more value per dollar spent than other products, people will buy it. My experience was that it cost more to drive the same distance. This means that I have less money to buy food, clothing, shelter, and entertainment. If my experience is the average, then producing ethanol creates jobs but loses productivity and wealth. 

And yes, a higher price for gasoline would produce jobs in the United States. We are the world’s third largest producer of oil and last year witnessed a large increase in American oil production (see “Drill Baby, Drill”). Even if all the gasoline or oil came from abroad, Americans would be needed to transport it from ports to end users and the money that I save from buying the best fuel for my vehicle would also employ Americans.  A higher price for gasoline would not improve productivity.
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Chavez and Mugabe at Copenhagen

(HT The Drudge Report)  Andrew Bolt describes a scene from Copenhagen for the heraldsun.com.au in, "Putting our economy in the hands of Chavez fans" that should give pause to Americans as leaders from Western countries negotiate the wealth transfer to third world countries necessary to establish a global cap and trade system for carbon. 

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening...

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation...

And a mass-murderer at Copenhagen lectures us about our crimes:

The anti-capitalist theme was picked up on by Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s veteran President, who is the target of Western sanctions over alleged human rights abuses. “When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”

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Ethanol as a Gas Additive

My family and I drove to Johnson County in Kansas for Thanksgiving.  I filled up with a  E10 and 10% ethanol-90% gasoline blend before leaving expecting about a 3% decline in fuel mileage.  A gallon of ethanol contains about 70% of the energy contained in a gallon of gasoline and the government claims that 1.03 gallons of the ethanol blend is needed to replace every gallon of unblended gasoline.  I experienced much worse fuel mileage.  I tried to buy unblended gasoline for the return trip but failed.  For the first 325 miles my Sienna got 24.1 miles per gallon (mpg), and for the second 325 miles, 26.7 mpg.[1]  The E10 reduced my fuel mileage by 10.79%!  On the first half of the trip, I used 11.95 gallons of gasoline, and on the second, 11.98.  If the purpose of the E10 is to reduce oil consumption, it isn't working.  Perhaps it will keep the air cleaner, but I would require an explanation to be convinced.  After all, I am using the same amount of gasoline, and if the government claims of gasoline mileage are exaggerated, why not the environmental claims?[2]

I did a little research meaning that I did a Google search, read three articles and found one describing similar experiences.  The article, "Drivers avoiding ethanol additive," and  is written by the AP and published online by the Auburnpub.com.  A Honda Accord driver experienced an even bigger decline in fuel economy (20%) than I.  

Corcoran said her husband's Honda Accord got a bit more than 30 mpg on “pure” gasoline versus 25 mpg on E10. Blakey, who lives in O'Fallon, Ill., soured on E10 after noticing a big drop in mileage in her family's 2002 LeSabre on a trip to visit her daughter in Ohio.

The writer interviewed Ron Lamberty, a vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol, an industry group, who both sells and drinks Kools-Aid if my experience is typical.  He claims that,

...many vehicles running on E10 will experience a 3 to 4 percent drop in fuel efficiency, though some vehicles actually see a slight increase because of E10's higher octane rating.

The article paraphrases Lamberty as explaining that

...mileage critics are not taking a larger picture into account. Ethanol burns cleaner, creates jobs, is good for fuel-injection systems and - by reducing overall demand - reduces gasoline prices...Ethanol burns cleaner, creates jobs, is good for fuel-injection systems and - by reducing overall demand - reduces gasoline prices.

Lamberty earns a big uh-hu for the claim of reducing gasoline demand and therefore prices if my experience is common.  Gasoline prices will remain unchanged and corn prices will rise.  And what about those jobs?  Here Lamberty expresses make work bias, focusing on job creation rather than productivity.  We cold also create more jobs in the oil sector by simply pouring one gallon of gasoline in ten into the earth every time we fill up.  Think of the additional jobs needed to produce 10% more gasoline to compensate for the spilled gasoline and all the jobs that will be needed to clean the environment and the medical personnel needed to detoxify our bodies.  What a boost to the economy!  

[1]  To keep the math simple for the purpose of exposition, I assumed that the trip was evenly divided between the two fuels.  The first part of the trip, which used the ethanol blend was approximately 390 miles and the second part, 260 miles.  My vehicle got 24.10 mpg with the ethanol blend, and 27.35 mpg with gas.  I used .0373 gallons of gas per mile, not counting the ethanol, on the first half of the trip and only .0366 gallons per mile on the second.  I burned more gas with the ethanol blend than with just gas.  And the story gets slightly worse.  My tank completely empty when I filled up with unblended gas.   

[2]  The Clean Air Act Amendment of 1992 requires the use of oxygenated gasoline in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution. 
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When Carbon Limits Are Not Enough

(HT Drudgereport)  Self-righteous elements of the environmentalist population, whose belief in their own dogma is both devout and zealous, are convinced that they must impose their wisdom on others to save the planet from disaster, or to save the planet itself.  That was the purpose of the Copenhagen meetings.  With the CRUtape letters released, the meetings have degenerated into debating man's role in global warming.  Some don't find international attempts to limit carbon emissions enough to "save" the planet and the environment sufficient, insisting that we must impose a policy of one child per woman on the planet.  The right of a woman to control her body is thrown out like the baby with the bathwater.  Children are not a bundle of joy that will fund a country's retirement benefits but a negative externality that will impose costs on the strained resources of an overpopulated planet. 

If a growing population threatens to impoverish the world, shouldn't it have started already?  Population keeps rising, and with the exception of the past two years of financial recession, world income keeps rising.  Nor does an imposed limit on reproduction seem necessary.  Wealthy countries have falling birth rates and low or negative growth rates.  In these countries, populations are growing because of immigration and increased longevity.  In fact, the world population growth rate probably peaked in the 1960's at 2% annually and fallen to the current rate of about 1.12% annually.

Diane Francis, of the Financial Post expresses this opinion well in, "The real inconvenient truth."  Ms. Francis believes that China, a poor country whose air is choked with soot and whose rivers are flowing with toxins, and whose people are ruled by a totalitarian regime set the example of good environmental policy. 

The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

The world's other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity's soaring reproduction rate.

Ironically, China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world's leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict...

The fix is simple. It's dramatic. And yet the world's leaders don't even have this on their agenda in Copenhagen. Instead there will be photo ops, posturing, optics, blah-blah-blah about climate science and climate fraud, announcements of giant wind farms, then cap-and-trade subsidies.

None will work unless a China one-child policy is imposed. Unfortunately, there are powerful opponents. Leaders of the world's big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control. And most political leaders in emerging economies perpetuate a disastrous Catch-22: Many children (i. e. sons) stave off hardship in the absence of a social safety net or economic development, which, in turn, prevents protections or development.

China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet.

For those who balk at the notion that governments should control family sizes, just wait until the growing human population turns twice as much pastureland into desert as is now the case, or when the Amazon is gone, the elephants disappear for good and wars erupt over water, scarce resources and spatial needs.

The point is that Copenhagen's talking points are beside the point.

The only fix is if all countries drastically reduce their populations, clean up their messes and impose mandatory conservation measures.

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My Earth Day Speech

I lived in a community that kicked off a campaign to stop teen drinking with a cocktail party.  The teens saw the double standard.  (HT Drudge) Mark Knoller hit the just the right tone in "Obama Earth Day Flights Burned More Than 9,000 Gallons Of Fuel," CBS NEWS, April 24, 2009. 

It happens every time a president leaves town to make an Earth Day speech. Reporters scramble to point out how much fuel was expended so the President could talk about conserving energy and using alternative fuels.

President Obama could have saved at least 9,116 gallons of fuel by giving his speech at the White House – but no wind turbines are manufactured here.

President Obama called for a new era of energy exploration promoting his administration's plan to develop and promote renewable and alternative fuels.  I wish the president would have delivered a different speech.  Overlooking a national park, it would begin, 

Americans remain grateful to leaders like Theodore Roosevelt for preserving land as parks, creating a refuge for flora and fauna.  As a nation, we have made great progress lowering pollution levels and providing the public goods of clean air and water.  There is room for progress.  In attempting to protect our forests from fire, we have allowed dense underbrush to accumulate, making fires when they occur larger and more dangerous.  I am announcing a public program to clear our forests of the accumulated underbrush, restoring them to a more natural order.  Once achieved, forest fires will be smaller and less dangerous.  They will be allowed to burn unless endangering human life.

Our economy is built on the strength, creativity and efficiency of Americans working through markets.  Problems of rising energy prices will largely be resolved in the private sector.  The government will assist by funding basic research and the legal and institutional framework that recognizes that increases in our welfare have been and will be linked to increasing energy consumption, but no more. 

Enjoy the beauty of the country that God has placed under our stewardship and be wise stewards so that future generations will enjoy an even cleaner and more beautiful environment. 

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