Environmentalism Has Gone to the Dogs

One of the great ironies of any movement hoping to build a utopia is that as it gains success it begins to self-destruct. Coalitions that are carefully built up around common causes begin to fray, and the contempt each has for the ultimate vision of the other generates friction at first and ultimately spawns conflict among the factions. 

Think Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin and anyone, come to think of it. Revolutions are real-life versions of the movie Highlander–there can be only one. 

The United States and liberal democracies are not fertile ground for revolutionary movements because, with all their flaws, they function relatively well and tend to keep the pendulum swings modest compared to places like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, or Russia. The revolutionaries are fringe and rarely gain purchase. 

Unfortunately, the modern left has great support in our cultural institutions, which adore revolutions in the abstract. The left remains utopian and admires violent revolutionary action, but because the cultural institutions are inclined to “democracy wash” and idolize revolutionaries, they can get a foothold in society until they go way too far. 

Think BLM, Antifa, NetZero, and criminal justice “reform.” Elite Americans have been taught to admire utopianism instead of look askance, but at the end of the day they turn their backs once the bright fire of idealism burns them. 

They turn their back far too late and after far too many people are harmed, but the Chesa Boudins are ultimately thrown out of office and sent off to academia to lick their wounds and collect nice paychecks. 

The Democratic Party’s current collapse and America’s experiment with Trumpism is a result of leftist utopian overreach. And one such example of the left’s insanity is the war on pets. 

The war on pets is part of the NetZero branch of the leftist movement, which pushed the war on cars, energy, fossil fuels, food production, animal husbandry, and, ultimately, human beings. The war on fossil fuels is most familiar to people, as is the “renewable fuels” movement and the push for EVs. Our appliances, our light bulbs, and our showers and dishwashers have all been annoyingly toyed with by the NutZero crowd, not to mention our commutes being worsened by “traffic calming,” highway protests, all that idiocy. 

But the Rubicon would have been the war on pets. We love our pets, and that part of the movement has never gained much purchase. 

Cats have been in the crosshairs for quite a while. Cats famously hunt birds, killing billions a year, and environmentalists hate them in principle, even though the blue hairs seem to have cats as their only friends. Nobody is giving up their cats, and despite the COVIDidiots wanting to kill all cats in Britain during the COVID outbreak, even the UK government couldn’t gather the courage to do so. 

We love our cats. 

Dogs have “extensive and multifarious” environmental impacts, disturbing wildlife, polluting waterways and contributing to carbon emissions, new research has found. https://t.co/J2JXsybuSN

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 15, 2025

But if you think cat lovers might vote out any politician who wanted to kill them off or take them away, imagine the war that would have come if the government came for our dogs. Banning Pit Bulls, which are unpopular with most people, has been impossible. Taking away people’s dogs would create a real armed insurrection the likes of which America hasn’t seen since 1860. 

But the left is toying with the idea because dogs eat, and that is a bad thing. 

Dogs have “extensive and multifarious” environmental impacts, disturbing wildlife, polluting waterways and contributing to carbon emissions, new research has found.

An Australian review of existing studies has argued that “the environmental impact of owned dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally recognised”.

While the environmental impact of cats is well known, the comparative effect of pet dogs has been poorly acknowledged, the researchers said.

The review, published in the journal Pacific Conservation Biology, highlighted the impacts of the world’s “commonest large carnivore” in killing and disturbing native wildlife, particularly shore birds.

No wonder they took guns away from citizens in Australia. Americans rarely get up in arms about a policeman killing a suspect, but when a dog gets shot, the anger flows, and with good reason. Criminals bad, dogs good. Even bad dogs are just good dogs in need of training. 

The revolutionaries want to kill dogs to save Gaia, who apparently hates dogs, but if they have to choose between Gaia and their dogs, most of us would happily tell Gaia to get bent. A life without puppies is barely worth living. Giving up our dogs is as attractive to us as leaving a comrade on the battlefield is to a Marine. 

This gets me back to revolutionary or utopian movements, which deny trade-offs and compromises. Because such movements are based on the idea that compromises are defeats, they will actually push for absurdities, such as abandoning our best friends in the name of reducing CO2 and saving the occasional penguin. 

Americans will grumble about low-pressure showers and less effective dishwashers, but take away their dogs, and they will shoot you without a moment’s remorse. And they would be right to do so. Mostly right, anyway, because anybody who talks about a dog’s carbon footprint is clearly a psychopath who might start saying things like, “it rubs the lotion on the skin.”

John Oliver might still get applause for arguing that boys should invade women’s sports, but he would be tarred and feathered should he adopt the truly extreme position that we should abandon our dogs. 

Banning pets never got the momentum that NetZero did. Even Europeans, who have endured attacks on farming and escalating prices of electricity, would never endure a pet-free society. 

If and when the human-induced apocalypse finally comes, the survivors will wander the earth accompanied by their dogs. 

Gaia, or dogs. For most of us it’s an easy choice. And that is why utopians ultimately get tossed on the ash heap of history. There are some lines one never crosses. 

Hating puppies is one of those lines.