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As the world gears up for the climate talks in Copenhagen next month, the mainstream media is overlooking one important climate change contributor, and it isn’t coal or cars.

Three years ago, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations released a lengthy report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow.” Among the plethora of environmental problems the livestock industry is accused of contributing to — water pollution, habit fragmentation and desertification of arable land among them — climate change figured prominently.

In particular, the report concluded that livestock production accounts for 18%, or one-fifth, of global emissions. This figure is higher than all transportation sources combined.

The Obama administration’s early leadership on global warming seems to have stirred up the climate skeptics, cynics and deniers again. Now they’re trying to discredit not only climate science, but the climate scientists the president appointed to advise him.

But when it comes to what President Obama, Congress and the rest of us should be doing, none of the squabbling matters. Outside our laboratories and classrooms and scientific journals, the chronic arguments about global warming have very little to do with the fundamental challenge ahead: Making the fastest possible transition to a green economy.

Why? Because climate change is an issue where you don’t have to agree on the problem to agree on the solutions.

First, some background on the latest media debate.

The Washington Post allowed George Will to waste some perfectly good ink to argue that Obama’s science advisors are "dark green doomsayers." The New York Times followed suit, publishing a column by John Tierney, who featured a book by Roger Pielke, a researcher at the University of Colorado who says some climate scientists are engaging in "stealth issue advocacy."

It is a shame that the senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore, is not interested in existing economic data. He proved it once again in a opinion piece masquerading as a news story under the headline California Green Jobs Experiment Isn't Going Well.

We can dispense with the lie in the headline quite easily by citing the most current jobs data available: Green jobs have grown 10 times faster than total job growth in California since 2005. The data released just last month is available here, and the economic benefits of the green trend have been documented in study after study. The state's pursuit of energy efficiency over the last 35 years has translated into 1.5 million jobs and tens of billions of dollars in payroll taxes and energy savings.

We reached Terry Tamminen, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's environment advisor, via e-mail as he stepped off a plane in India. Here's what he had to say: "I don't know quite where to begin correcting the blatantly wrong information. I would think the Wall Street Journal, being a financial paper, would rely on accurate economic data and could afford a fact checker or two."

But Stephen Moore apparently has no need for facts that get in the way. In a WSJ op-ed called Gang Green published on August 15, 2008, he wrote:

The environmental movement has morphed into the most authoritarian philosophy in America.

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• David Sassoon's blog
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