Animal rights groups have launched an attack on global warming activist Al Gore. Their claim: a vegetarian diet would be more effective in reducing greenhouse gases than switching from SUV's to cleaner cars.

"You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist," said Matt A. Prescot, manager of vegan campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in an article in The New York Times.

PETA is raising billboards across the country showing a cartoon of a flabby Al Gore munching on a drumstick with the tagline "Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat
Is the #1 Cause of Global Warming."

The personal attack -- which mocks Gore's weight and lifestyle -- angered some environmentalists, who respect the former vice president for speaking out eloquently on the climate change crisis.  And the debate between groups sometimes lumped together under the label "liberal" has underscored an underlying truth, according to activists on both sides. Animal rights crusaders are not the same as environmentalists.  Just because someone is passionate about the rights of house cats does not mean they will fight suburban sprawl. They may well live in the 'burbs.  And just because someone lobbies for protecting the Chesapeake Bay from sewage doesn't mean they don't hunt deer.

Politically, the question is: Would it be easier to get Americans to give up SUV's and McMansions?  Or steak and milk?  Either lifestyle change might be difficult.  People have been eating meat for millions of years, ever since there have been people.  We've been burning coal and oil for about two centuries.

RiverStone posted this defense of Gore recently on the blog Democratic Underground blog:

"Though I appreciate the point that raising animals for food contributes to greenhouse gases more than cars; I don't agree with their tactic to target Al Gore with billboards. Chicken in hand or not, Al's education and fight to reduce global warming not only serves to make the world more habitable over the long haul for humans, but animals as well (ask any polar bear). It seems very hypocritical for PETA to attack a man so dedicated to making the world a better place for ALL living things! I do appreciate some of PETA's goals, though here they want to shoot the wrong messenger. I think this billboard tactic will back fire - don't pick on Al!"

Here is PETA'S position, from a press release they sent out last week:

"Why is PETA picking on Gore? The meat industry is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, but Gore has repeatedly refused even to discuss the issue. Consider what scientists are saying:

* In its recent report "Livestock's Long Shadow-Environmental Issues and Options," the United Nations determined that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. The report goes on to say that meat is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."

* Researchers at the University of Chicago have determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering global warming than switching from a standard American car to a Toyota Prius.

Here is the University of Chicago report.

Some conservatives are using PETA's campaign as a tool to discredit the whole idea that Americans should do something about global warming.  Bloggers on the right have already started the mockery.  They're trying to conflate the animal rights campaigners with environmentalists.

Here is what the blogger Drudge wrote on a web site called A Little More to the Right: "I find myself compelled to defend the wacko Al Gore on this. The arrogant fringe Leftwing suppose to tell society what to eat, how to dress, what to think, and how to talk. They even target their own wackos. Have at it, I guess. I’ll leave it to Al discover the inconvenient truth that his political party has become completely unhinged…."

Is PETA the Democratic party? 

Most would say it's tiny part, at best. Like the Log Cabin Republicans are a part of the Republican Party.  But the idea that the battle against global warming may involve changes in diet is not just the opinion of a few in the animal rights crowd.

For one, Gore believes it.  On Page 317 of the book version of "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore suggests: "modify your diet to include less meat."

Locally, we have Maryland-based author Mike Tidwell, who founded the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He wrote in his recent book "The Ravaging Tide" that the number one source of methane (a greenhouse gas) worldwide is animal agriculture. "Every year, livestock raised for human consumption release nearly 90 million tons of methane as part of their natural digestive processes....So any nation serious about fighting global warming would patriotically encourage a reduction in animal meat consumption in favor of farm-raised fish and savery, soy-based meat substitutes."

Which leaves the question: Would some Americans, especially those who live inland -- in cold Midwestern states, for example, distant from the coastal liberal enclaves most vulerable to "the ravaging tide" -- prefer global warming to a soy-based diet?

Readers, what do you think about all this?

RESPONSE from reader Sandra Sittler:  Hasn't anyone heard yet about some special ingredient or medicine that can be given to cows to reduce massively their gas??? They are doing this in Germany, and it is real. Maybe our agencies should look into it. They called it in one article Moolanta, however I think that part was a joke. But if it was put in the feed of cows across the world, that would greatly keep down the global warming.

Reader Kim Ethridge provided this link to an article that ran in The Guardian of London about efforts to change cow diet to reduce global warming gases.

Which raises another rather impolite issue.... Would changing human diets increase our own output of methane?  If more people became vegans, would they have to eat more beans to get enough protein? Would this produce blowback, so to speak?