Your dog’s carbon pawprint is really big

A new study says dogs and cats take a toll on the environment each year that’s roughly equivalent to a year’s worth of driving by 13.6 million cars, a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles found. The study was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

UCLA geography professor Gary Okin found that the country’s 163 million cats and dogs are “responsible for 25 percent to 30 percent of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States,” the university announced. That adds up to some 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Okin compared how much meat humans eat versus pets, then analyzed the environmental impact of each.