The Patriot Post® · Save the Planet, Ditch Your Pets?

TIME magazine recently published a piece by a bioethicist (red flag right there) named Jessica Pierce, who lays out the case against the practice of keeping pets. Pierce argues that, at its core, pet-keeping is hedonistic.

Her argument: It’s self-gratification because we love animals and they provide companionship, but what do pets get out of it? Not much, according to Pierce. First, pets are subject to Big Pet malfeasance — bred in inhumane conditions such as puppy or kitten mills. Second, pets are subject to living in captivity their whole lives without purpose or social interactions. Third, of course, there is the climate impact that pet-keeping has. According to Pierce, a 2017 study found that the heavy metal diet of dogs and cats through their pet food is equivalent to the carbon emissions of 14 million cars.

While one can argue that breeding mills should be abolished, the solution shouldn’t be “Don’t get pets.” The solution should be adoption via rescuers and ethical pet breeders.

It also should be pointed out that, biblically, we are called to be good stewards of the planet. Part of that means caring for animals, which leads to Pierce’s next argument: A pet’s life is a dark and meaningless one.

As for a pet’s quality of life, Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw debunks that one really efficiently:

As to health considerations, the suggestion that housepets may wind up with shorter lifespans is unfounded based on my research and years of conversations with veterinarians. On average, feral cats survive for two to five years. This can be caused by a combination of exposure, poor diet, lack of vaccinations and appropriate medical care, predation, or accidents. Conversely, our housecats have been fully vaccinated with regular checkups. Virtually every one of them lived for more than a decade and one “miracle cat” named Rags made it to 23 years old. The situation with dogs is similar. Wild dogs live an average of five to seven years. Our dogs have ranged ten years and above, with Mr. Basset nearly reaching 20.

The most bizarre of Pierce’s arguments, the climate change one, is probably going to have even the hardcore leftists up in arms, exposing a potential rift in the intersectional coalition. The DINKWADs (Dual Income, No Kids With a Dog) will be upset that she called their substitute babies an unbearable carbon emissions producer.

Pierce, as a basis for her arguments, places animals on the same level as humans in terms of importance and complexity of thought and emotion, and they become subjects, not objects. While pets clearly are subjects, it is a mistake to personify them and to equate pet-keeping as a near equivalent to human slavery.

People love their pets — albeit sometimes to an unhealthy degree (i.e., replacing children with pets) — so even a bioethicist telling pet owners that they are dallying on the dark side of consumerism isn’t going to get very far. In fact, it’s going to go over about as well as Kristi Noem’s story about killing an unruly hunting dog.

Anti-humanism is the ironic twist to this story, ultimately making Pierce’s take so unappealing. Hers could also be construed as another form of the oppressor vs. oppressed worldview — humans are the oppressors in this dynamic, and pets are the oppressed. When it comes to leftist ideology, no action is virtuous enough and no sacrifice is sufficient enough to earn our way into their utopia. Ultimately, their version of utopia is people free at heart, which is a pretty dire prospect.