No, WCAX 3, Owning a Dog Is NOT a “Wrong Climate Choice”
By
Linnea Lueken
August 22, 2025
Vermont’s WCAX 3 news station, posted an article from the Associated Press (AP) titled “People often make wrong climate choices, a study says. One surprise is owning a dog,” in which the writers claim that owning a dog is bad for the climate because they are meat eaters. This is completely misguided. Meat eating does not have an inordinate impact on the global climate and studies show that dog ownership can be beneficial to peoples’ mental health – an important consideration in a period where the media coverage of climate change is stoking climate-fear-related anxiety and mental health issues.
The post summarizes points from a recent study from the National Academy of Sciences, which looked at survey participants’ beliefs when it came to the impact of their individual efforts to “fight” climate change. Participants apparently ““weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change, which is caused mostly by the release of greenhouse gases that happen when fuels like gasoline, oil and coal are burned.”
Aside from the point that it is very much not an established fact that most climate change is caused by human use of fossil fuels or is dangerous, it is interesting that the study ranks some very intrusive climate efforts as low-impact. Those included things like using energy efficient appliances and lightbulbs, and recycling. Those individual efforts are things that the U.S. government has pushed for decades, imposing burdensome regulations on consumers and appliance manufacturers alike, as well as hijacking public school classes to promote the merits of recycling.
Associated Press’ writers claim that that the three actions that “help the climate” most are avoiding flying, using renewable electricity, and “choosing not to get a dog.”
https://climaterealism.com/2025/08/no-wcax-3-owning-a-dog-is-not-a-wrong-climate-choice/
