The Meat Lobby Outspent Animal Rights Groups, Climate Groups, and Scientists, spending around $200 million in 2023

It is the largest positive impact a single person can have on the environment. Kurzgesagt video with the analysis.

As a vegetarian for decades, it's also cheaper, often healthier, and isn't difficult at all once you find some new recipes you like. You also don't need to switch all at once. Ease into it by cooking one vegetarian meal a week and then increase it as you find ones you like.

Vegan ≠ Vegetarian.

Veganism starts and ends with "no animal exploitation". And due to some weird ingroup/outgroup dynamics Extremely Online Vegans will get batshit insane radical with it and refuse to feed meat to their cats or insist that eating honey is fundamentally unethical.

I eat very little meat, mostly for environmental and partly for ethical reasons, but bringing up the environmentalist side of vegetarianism to defend veganism (a radical dogma based on a specific ethical stance) is missing the mark entirely.

With all that said, everyone should eat less meat, and way less red meat.
- I do agree the zeal of the recently converted veg*ns are not very helpful in messaging. Wagging your finger at people as individuals for a lifestyle and notions about nutrition ("but where do you get your protein from") they were likely born into/just accepted as a truth is not too helpful. Yelling at people for a dab of honey or egg or butter in something served to them....not really helping. Who has ever had their mind changed by such behaviors? If anything, this will make people double down in their delusions about how the SAD is good for them.
  
  Yes, most animal proteins are probably setting you up for diabetes, cancer, heart disease. And it's not really hard to discern this from looking at the evidence. Honest actors in the medical profession are already saying this, if they aren't compromised by the SAD industry complex. They are, IMHO, not saying it nearly enough. Far too many people still think they need "protein" (in their minds, meaning dead flesh which also happens to have lots and lots of fat, too, but they don't call this "a fat", they call it "a protein", lol) to live.
  
  In my opinion, if you compare the crazy levels of animal protein consumption in America with the arc of Big Tobacco and the levels of denialism also associated with it, we are maybe in the 1980s phase - when everyone but the most reactionary knew that using tobacco AND secondary smoke were life-threatening, but just before much was being done about it - the bans on indoor smoking only started in the late 1980s.
  
  Many people are starting to wake up from the Big Tobacco-esque levels of carnist propaganda...we'll see what action is going to be taken by governments, institutions, etc...
  
  We're like 1960s tobacco industry at best. I don't see the subsidies on red meat going away in the next 10 years, and probably not the next 20 if I'm honest, short of a catastrophic food crisis that would cause us to re-evaluate the number of human calories produced per hectare of agricultural land.
  
  I'd like to be wrong, and change does come in waves so maybe 10 years from now I'll change my mind. Maybe. But right now the idea of not subsidizing red meat production is fringe even within the left of the left – and the left hasn't exactly been making electoral strides in most countries recently.
Infinitely incorrect. Not reproducing is the greatest lack of a negative impact a single person can have on the environment (which is all going vegan can do, not eating meat will never have greater than a zero net impact on emissions).
- Infinitely incorrect. Not reproducing is the greatest lack of a negative impact a single person can have on the environment
  
  Don't stop there. You can end all your emissions now by killing yourself.
  
  NOTE: I would not like anyone to kill themselves. I am pointing out the logical end to this particularly stupid argument.
- Not having children can also at best have a net zero impact. If we're taking opportunity costs for future actions into account, the single highest reduction in emissions for an individual is to die.
  
  In day to day life, veganism has the single highest impact. Still, I'll never have (non -adopted) children, emissions are a part of it, but mostly because I don't want to bring someone into the world that's so thoroughly fucked at the moment
  
  Knock it off with the “but it’s better to die than go vegan” argument. It’s rude.
  
  That's not what I said? I was making a point about how not having children isn't in the same category as going vegan, when it comes to emission reductions.
  
  I've personally been vegan for years.
  
  This is a weird thing to get offended on when you’re the one that brought up the thing it’s countering. Anyone saying it is just being pedantic, and while they are technically correct they (usually) aren’t suggesting people kill themselves instead of going vegan. You getting offended at pedantry is… odd.
  
  In day to day life, veganism has the single highest impact
  
  I don't know how this can be quantified, but id love to see how you try.
I'm not watching your YouTube video. if you can't articulate a compelling reason, just say so.

I find it hard to believe that it is the biggest impact a single person can have. can you enumerate the other strategies it is weighed against?

you also aren't supporting your claims about affordability, health, nor ease with anything but anecdotal evidence.
- I'm not watching your YouTube video. if you can't articulate a compelling reason, just say so.
  
  What absolutely trash reasoning. "Please type up a compelling reason just for me, I don't want to watch a well researched and produced discussion on the topic." It's bordering on sealioning.
  
  Please type up a compelling reason just for me
  
  Here's another video just on that!
  
  I did watch that video. probably a dozen times. it gets posted often. I shouldn't be expected to debunk an argument that isn't made.
  
  I rewatched* it after I made my comment though, and it does not establish what they claimed. it doesn't cite sources**, and it's primary thesis is "it's complicated"
  
  edit(s):
  
  * i actually listened to it. but just now, after i made this comment, i scrubbed it and i found:
  
  ** they do some pretty hard-to-see and also hard-to-research citation in the form of citing academic papers in the bottom right of the screen around the time they are making the claim. and let me tell you, poore-nemecek is the basis of the lca analysis (which i could have guessed), and that lca analysis is flat out bad science. it's certainly not a compelling reason to be vegan.
  
  Those are very fair objections and that video isn't perfect - I was only objecting to your apparent refusal to consume a video. A lot of content these days is produced in video form so it's not reasonable to reject an argument based on media - some topics just aren't well expressed in a written form.
  
  But, TL;DR I wasn't criticizing your opinion or decision - just the common response of rejecting something based on the media it's presented in.
- Got it you're a troll
  
  calling me names is neither an argument nor evidence.
  
  The evidence has been given to you in the form of links to youtube videos. You refusing to click through isn't lack of evidence.
  
  I looked at it. it's not compelling
  
  Well said!

We need to greatly reduce meat consumption in order to make our planet sustainable for human life. You can start at your own pace, but it's easier than ever with all of the meat alternatives these days.

I could be convinced meat production needs to be reduced, and consumption would necessarily follow, but haven't you already tried reducing consumption? it hasn't worked to reduce, or even stop the growth of production:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL
- How does it feel to be ratioed by a bunch of veggie bros
  
  Lol... it's not just veggie bros, just a lot of normal folk with more than just a few brain cells kicking around.
  
  (I would like a really good argument to going complete vegan, rather than vegetarian though) Are the hens harmed by the eggs they lay?
  
  If you don't have some complete moral issue against eating meat, the most rational choice is to eat much less meat. That causes the maximum discomfort to the industry, while the least discomfort to the individual.
  
  On eggs:
  
  Male and female chicks are birthed in equal amounts, but the male chicks are thrown into a meat grinder as they can't produce eggs.
  
  Certifications that chickens are being kept in any kind of conditions.that are kind to the animal are mostly crap. Unless you know and have inspected the farm where your eggs are coming from, assume the chickens are being kept in awful conditions.
  
  What happens when the chicken stops producing enough eggs, when they're past their peak? They get slaughtered, of course.
  
  Veganism in general is simply a consequence of having empathy with animals being held by humans. Unless they're treated like pets, they're going to face pain and suffering that simply isn't necessary for human survival. And if it isn't necessary, why inflict pain?
- Why aren't you arguing that people need to eat more meat, since it's o good, and clearly the way to go?
  
  do you have some evidence for that?

If nothing else - your health.

your not my doctor
- Never claimed to be. I sure hope your doctor has better nutrition training than the average doctor. That is if you are only going to rely on your personal doctor for anything nutrition-related.