But I like feeling like a real manly man when I eat my real manly meat in a real manly way with my real manly bros, surely that's worth a few hundreds thousands human lives a year ?
(And btw, plant-based diets could also save 100 million animal lives a year)
I think it you want to see the environmental benefits, is less of saving animal lives and more ensuring that 100 million animals a year never exist?
Edit: Not sure what is controversial about this. We stop eating meat to stop farming of livestock. No livestock lives are saved, just new animals aren't born into the mincer.
All plant-based foods, whole-foods or not, have lower emissions than animal products
EDIT with a source:
Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
[...]
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
How are people in this century not understanding that humans produce animals for consumption and that eating animals' meat does not come from a magical apparition. We don't eat cows that are out there, we create cows for you to eat (under 4 years)