Recent reports on climate change are being used to vilify livestock farming like never before. Over past years there have been studies and reports, some credible some not, linking global warming to livestock and poultry. Such reports have always been used to prop up the arguments and credibility of those opposed to livestock production. Animal rights groups in particular hitch their wagon to any convenient truth that fits their mantra. Generally, though, these studies have gotten little notice other than an occasional headline or stand-up routine about belching cows. That is until now.

A report released this past November by the United Nations has taken on a life of its own. The report, by the highly respected U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has singled out livestock as a bigger threat to the environment than cars.

Once news wires picked up the story, newspapers, TV and Internet outlets around the world began repeating the contention that meat production is the single biggest contributor to global warming. When factoring in the energy to manufacture fertilizer, produce feed and process meat, the livestock sector worldwide generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transport combined, according to the FAO. It comes with a hard number of 18%. The 400-page report also surmises that, global livestock production is a major source of land degradation, deforestation, water and air pollution, water shortage and loss of biodiversity.

Activists have been telling us this for years. But they don’t have the stature of the UN. Most notable is EarthSave founder John Robbins and his 1987 book, A Diet for a New America: A 443-page reason to give up meat, milk and eggs and switch to a plant-based food system. A book all card-carrying animal activists have committed to memory. With sales exceeding 1 million copies, it’s a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) best seller. It’s a book largely discredited by agricultural scientists and economists.

Robbins’ numbers and arguments re-appeared a few years later in anti-technologist Jeremy Rifkin’s book Beyond Beef, an even longer ecological and social vilification of the cattle industry. Then Robbins’ messages went mainstream, actually appearing in an Environment Canada booklet aimed at high school students. One fabrication that persists is that a single hamburger uses more resources to produce than driving to the local drive-thru to get it.

In April 2006, research conducted at the University of Chicago was announced via press release. The hook? That switching to a vegetarian diet is as or more helpful than switching to a hybrid car. "Vegetarianism is the new Prius" and "A T-bone is a Hummer on a plate," read national headlines and activist web sites. The message to a concerned public is that vegetarianism, or at the very least downsizing and de-industrializing animal agriculture, is a not only necessary but a relatively easy way to save the planet. It’s a way to allay the collective North American guilt about being the world’s least efficient consumers of just about everything. And for some of us it may be an easier option than forgoing our cars.

Animal activists, always looking for a new way to spin a tough sell, are co-opting the climate change debate. They’re citing these reports to market themselves and their message. More important perhaps is that climate change is helping them get a seat at new tables.

The Farm Animal Reform Movement (the reform being an end to animal farms) has launched the tag line: "Cows cause more than cars" to build campaigns around climate change. On his ‘Eating the Earth’ 2007 lecture tour, rancher-turned-vegan Howard Lyman of Oprah Winfrey fame describes how the meat industry is now recognized as "one of the leading culprits behind global warming." An April press release by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) in Toronto is titled: How Better Animal Protection Can Help Combat Climate Change. The central theme is the need to end "factory farming".

Climate Change provides a convenient forum for animal activists to reach otherwise disinterested audiences, be it policy makers, legislators, the public or media. The animal movement is also grabbing the opportunity to build their strategic alliance with an environmental movement that has largely ignored them. Reaching out to publicly accepted environmentalists is among their current Internet patter.

David Suzuki, a long-time Climate Change lobbyist, includes meat eating on his list of shouldn’ts. Greenpeace and Canada’s Green Party have now signed on to the anti-sealing campaign on the premise that global warming is endangering the herd. Forty-five environmental and other organizations joined the first Climate Crisis Action Day on March 20th in Washington, D.C. And on April 14, 1,400 demonstrations in 50 states and Canada called on the US government "to step it up" on global warming by legislating to cut greenhouse gasses 80 per cent by 2050. This grassroots lobby involves animal rights groups. Their advisement is: "Adopting a vegan lifestyle can reduce greenhouse gas emissions more rapidly than replacing technologies that burn fossil fuels."

The anti-meat activists have always made meat eating a moral issue but climate change could make it an achievable political one as well. Which goes to show that perseverance and timing is everything.