It was a few words, spoken in a joking tone, that caused a huge uproar. On Wednesday 13 December, François Gemenne, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was a guest at LCI as COP28 drew to a close and resulted in an agreement calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels. A columnist for “Zero Emission” on Franceinfo was asked to respond to the broadcast of a report on cats and stated this: “Cats are a disaster for biodiversity. Dogs are a disaster for the climate.”
What didn’t he say? PUSH SPA France shared a powerful message on social network X, formerly Twitter: “No one has ever dared to make animal lovers feel guilty. It’s done!” On the set of the show Daily on TMC, Thursday, December 14, the expert even said he had received death threats from certain animal lovers. Several figures from the extreme right also reacted sharply. Florian Philippotpredicted by the Les Patriotes movement, condemned the supposed “Pet climate propaganda in the name of ‘climate’ (which) is deployed”. “How far will they go in their madness?”he got angry Nicolas Dupont-Aignan“If we don’t stop them, they will soon stop us from breathing.
However, François Gemenne’s remarks are based on several scientific studies published over the past 15 years (and he does not call for the killing of dogs and cats at all).
Cats, predators of birds and small mammals
The cat is by far the most popular animal in France. According to estimates by Fediaf, the European representative of the food industry for animals, more commonly known as “pet food”, approximately 14.9 million felines inhabited the territory in 2022. And they are indeed a threat to biodiversity.
An American study published in 2013 in the journal The nature of communication Cats are estimated to kill between one and four billion birds, a median of 2.5 billion birds, and six to 22 billion small mammals, a median of 12 billion, annually in the United States. However, it clarified that the main culprits were stray, stray or feral cats (which have returned to the wild) and not domestic cats. But these stray cats are often animals abandoned by humans or descended from abandoned animals. The study concluded that it is one of the largest, if not the largest, cause of anthropogenic mortality in small American animals.
Scientists from the French National Museum of Natural History and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences also published a paper in 2019 focusing on the effect of domestic cats on bird populations. They found that between 2000 and 2015, garden bird mortality increased by at least 50% as there were more and more cats in France and Belgium. Between 12% and 26% of bird deaths were caused by cats. “Cat-related mortality is one of the largest observed causes of death, on the same scale as bird mortality due to collisions with windows.”, the specialists explained. They also called for the potential impact of cats on urban biodiversity to be taken into account when managing parks and gardens.
Cats have more influence in cities and islands
This is also explained by the National Museum of Natural History on its website, after completing a participatory program between 2015 and 2022 that allowed the observation of 38,000 prey brought back by cats (68% small mammals including rodents, 22% birds, 8% small reptiles). According to him, “in cities, it’s the concentration of felines that worsens the impact of their catches because they are overpopulated”. This is also the case with the islands, as reported Science and the future. For example, cats introduced to the Kerguelen Islands that have become feral have had a devastating effect on the biodiversity there, to the extent that the archipelago has decided to regulate them.
But “in areas where it is not an invasive species, for example in the French countryside, the cat is one predator among others”the nuances of the museum. “The cat is not directly responsible for the decline of common birds. Their shortage is mainly due to the disappearance of insects and loss of natural habitat. However, the cat represents a significant additional pressure on the weakened population.”
Dogs, more polluters than SUVs?
Now what about the dogs? Their influence on the climate has been recorded for many years. The first scientific study appeared in 2009 in the United States under a provocative title Is it time to eat the dog? She concluded that the annual meat consumption of a medium-sized dog pollutes twice as much as an SUV driven 10,000 km each year. A conclusion that was already quite controversial at the time.
“A lot of people worry about having an SUV, but they don’t worry about having a German Shepherd, and we say in this book that maybe they should worry too, because the environmental impact is comparable.”two authors, Brenda and Robert Vale, explained at the time, according to a New Zealand magazine Things.
Similar conclusions almost a decade later in another study on the environmental impact of dog and cat diets, published in 2017. According to it, more than 160 million American dogs and cats are responsible for 25% 30% of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States states. The carbon impact also depends on where you live and the size of the pet. Other researchers have also looked into the climate footprint of our faithful companions in 2019 and 2022, both concluding that a better understanding of the footprint is necessary.
But these conclusions are controversial. Kelly Swanson, a professor of animal nutrition at the University of Illinois, estimated in 2021 AFP that they were based on “many inaccurate assumptions”especially because “Most pet food comes from the by-products of the human food industry”. In fact, few cows or chickens are raised solely to feed dogs and cats. Their meat-based croquettes and pâtés are made from parts people are reluctant to eat, such as offal.
However, for the author of the 2017 study, Grégory Okin, this argument does not hold up. In fact, even humans could eat these parts if they wasted less.
How can we reduce the carbon footprint of our animals?
Still, no one is calling anyone to get rid of their dog or cat. Neither François Gemenne nor other climate defenders. The expert explained that for him it was just a matter of recalling a scientific observation and encouraging animal lovers to also ask questions about this little-discussed topic.
In addition, we must not forget all the benefits of companion animals, which help to reduce human tension, reduce their loneliness and even their mortality.
However, it is possible to find solutions to reduce your animals’ climate footprint, for example by not feeding them too much, by giving them more plant-based kibble, by using biodegradable litter for your cat, by that you will play with the cat more. to limit predation or by selecting smaller, less predatory pets such as hamsters, rabbits or birds.