Livestock production in Australia contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, with different impacts depending on the type of emission and its duration in the atmosphere. A new climate metric called GWP* was used to assess the climate impact of livestock industries in Australia from 1990 to 2018. Results showed that using GWP* instead of the traditional GWP100 metric revealed significant differences in emissions estimates. For example, sheep meat production was found to have a much lower emissions footprint when assessed with GWP* compared to GWP100. This suggests that strategies focusing on reducing methane emissions at the expense of increasing CO2 and N2O emissions may not be as effective in the long term for combating climate change.