When environmentalists aren't prattling on about solar panels, windmills, and electric cars and making believe nuclear power doesn't exist, they're talking about eating bugs. They're obsessed with it. They were particularly excited with the emergence of the large "brood X" of cicadas in certain parts of the country this year as they thought that could kick start the habit of eating insects not fully understanding that cicadas are still insects.

Seriously, guys, this is not helping your cause.

Now they're coming for Fido.

Owners just need to come around to the idea.

I love this formulation. Owners don't choose to feed their pets insects, they don't seek it out of their own volition, they need to "come around to the idea" with just a little nudge from their betters.

You ever notice that media outlets like the Washington Post never try to get single women to "come around to the idea" of firearm ownership as a means of personal safety, or try to convince disaffected young people to "come around to the idea" that turning to faith in God is a path toward finding meaning in their life?

I suppose it's much more important to cram insects down your dog's throat.

Speaking of which, I readily concede that most dogs will pretty much eat anything, including other dogs' poop. I had a dog once who would only eat the poop of our other dog, so at least she was discriminating.

It was still poop, though.

Still, this isn't about the dog. It isn't even about saving the planet.

It's about the owners. As one customer of bug-based dog food excitedly put it:

"I didn't even realize I could be fighting climate change with my dog."

I'm sure she tweets about it five times a day, too.

A couple of years ago, Anne Carlson — the founder of Jiminy's, a dog food start-up — conducted a taste test with her dog, Timber.

She filled half of his bowl with the meat-based food the Great Dane was used to eating, and she filled the other half with Jiminy's Cricket Crave, a kibble made from cricket powder, oats, quinoa, sweet potato and other plant-based ingredients. Then she stood back as he dug in.

You'll note she did not feed him a bowl of bugs. She fed him a concoction that included, somewhere, an undefined amount of, "cricket powder."

I suppose a story about pets eating insects produces a better headline than pets eating oats and sweet potatoes.

Timber's response was miraculous: He sniffed his options, then devoured the Cricket Crave and licked his lips contentedly, leaving the other side untouched.

"Licked his lips contentedly?" Did he also scratch his ears as if to say, "I quite enjoyed the cricket powder, thank you."

That was her aha moment, as in, "Aha, I can get dogs to eat sweet potatoes. I mean, crickets. Crickets is what I meant."

In fairness to Carlson, Jiminy's ingredient list does start with "crickets" which means it is, by weight, the largest component of those listed.

Cricket, Oats, Quinoa, Sweet Potato, Brown Rice, Chickpeas, Milo, Potato Protein, Peas

This is a regulatory requirement. However, it is also a regulatory requirement that if your lead ingredient is less than 95% of the product but at least 25%, the main label has to come with a qualifier of some sort, in the case of Jiminy's product, that qualifier is "Crave."

This is how makers of dog food get away with "beef dinner" or "beef platter" consisting of only 25% beef.

The point here is that this really isn't a heavy lift in terms of bug-eating. It's not like you're filling your dog's bowl with crickets, you're basically giving him a mix of plant-based foods with a shot of cricket flour for protein. How much, we don't know for sure, but somewhere between 95% and 25%.

But, again, this isn't about the dog, it's about the owners.

About a quarter of Americans are cutting back on eating meat, many alarmed by the fact that livestock farming causes up to 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet for all the humans observing meatless Mondays, opting for Impossible burgers or swearing off meat entirely, 180 million furry members of U.S. households are fed beef, lamb, poultry or pork in just about every meal.

"Many" are alarmed. Many certainly say they are alarmed, but when asked to rank their concerns in the last election, "climate change" failed to crack the top ten.

It's important you see, just not important important.

And why do difficult things when you can do easy things, like feed your dog kibble with some bugs in it.

Millennials, the fastest-growing contingent of pet owners, are keen on buying environmentally friendly products and willing to pay a premium for them, according to Francesca Mahoney, Petco's head of sustainability.

Hey, it's a market. Go make some money off of it.

One issue to consider is that despite popular thinking that dogs are omnivores, the reality is arguably quite different. Dogs are carnivores, as are cats. Dogs can tolerate grains, a likely adaptation of living with humans.

But they're still carnivores.

In the fifteen thousand years it's now believed dogs have lived beside humans, they've evolved. So, too, have humans. We've shifted from that Paleolithic, hunter-gatherer diet to one that reflects an agrarian condition.

In the case of dogs, we've found a few genes that reflect this adaptation. So, too, have we found genes that indicate a neurologic adaptation to cohabitation with humans. But just a few genes' difference is regarded as an adaptive shift to a condition. These alone can't possibly alter the entire digestive evolution of a species.

The result of these findings, argues Dr. Hendriks, is that the dog is undeniably a true carnivore. The dog just happens to have an adaptive metabolism as a result of living with humans for millennia. That's why the dog is perfectly capable of eating a grain-based diet, as most commercially fed dogs do.

Insects can possibly work as a meat substitute, but these new foods are not just insects, they are plant-based, possibly mostly plant-based which likely masks the fact that your dog is eating insects, and possibly to keep costs down, much as regular purveyors of dog food do by loading up on grains.

That should make you wonder whether giving your dog these insect-based foods, at a premium price no less, is any better for them than the cheap stuff which is also loaded up with plant-based foods as filler.

But, hey, if Cricket Crave works for you dog, and works for you, have at it.

Just be patient, because it might be a very long while before the rest of us "come around to the idea."