This told me everything I needed to know about the authors' beliefs. While I don't appreciate this position, I do appreciate their honesty. Kudos to them for that.
I don’t see anything to do with opinion or personal preference of the author in the quoted statement, hence my question.
How critical different strategies are to combating climate change has a significant weaker consensus. Energy productions and energy usage is usually the most critical in mitigating climate change. Diet is fairly debated subject, with some researchers listing it higher on the list while others listing it much lower.
Agriculture is often combined with land use, but the deeper one go into this subject the more difficult things get. A "wet" forest is several times better than a dry forest, so in terms of combating climate change, removing water draining can be more effective than increasing the amount of land dedicated to forestation. There are many factors for policy makers and a lot of low hanging fruit that is more critical to target first.
Modern high-intensity farming practices such as feedlots and cage chickens - where the majority of the feed is grain and harvested hay - are probably where the conflation enters. There is just as much a need to raise healthy, minimally carbon intensive animals as there is to reduce eating meat. There are farming methods to do this, but change is slow.
Staggering amounts of methane and nitrous oxide. Massive deforestation and other habitat loss (read: reduction of carbon sinks).
When scientists discuss diet in terms of global warming, part of that discussion include fair wages, ethnic discrimination, inequality, land ownership, ethnic heritage and culture, biodiversity and many other similar topics. All those influence how animal agriculture effects climate change. The global consensus is however very weak the further one goes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels impact on global warming is an established fact in the global scientific community, as well as the requirement to stop burning fossil fuels. Inequality is also a fairly establish contributor to global warming by itself, but the exact solutions does not have a strong consensus.
Have you not heard of the copious amounts of methane and nitrous oxide associated with animal agriculture? Have you not heard of the associated deforestation and other habitat loss that results in more atmospheric carbon?