You're wrong (and I seriously doubt you're a vegan). Such a change is absolutely needed, and it's one of the best things we could do.

We have to stop fossil fuels, absolutely, that's a prerogative. But animal agriculture is 60% of emissions from food sector (26% of total emissions).

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

And that's just the emissions. When we switch to renewables, we have to store/sequester the CO2 already in the atmosphere.

Animal agriculture takes so much lands, and carbon potential of reforestation/rewilding of grazing lands is so big, that we could store whole 1.5 Celcius carbon budget in forests there and stop the warming, reverse it, enable biodiversity to rebound and repair the water cycle (stop droughts).

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land...

How much land are we talking about.

https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-global-forest-area-capita-decr...

New study finds global forest area per capita has decreased by over 60%

https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/weve-lost-35-pe...

We’ve Lost 35 Percent of Forests in the Past 300 Years

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357

Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable

A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm

Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0757-z

Assessing the efficiency of changes in land use for mitigating climate change

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century

> Environmentally, losing ruminant food supplies that can convert inedible grasses into human sustenance would also be a shame (in a land use sense, vegetarianism would be better than veganism). We don't have the teeth or stomaches to eat most native grasses, unless we either GMO the shit out of them (or us) or else eat their seeds as grains.

We should reforest/rewild those pastures. We don't need those lands if we're not consuming meat/dairy.

> I think maybe it would be better for people to spend their time, money, and energy on more effective changes (say, political or science or engineering) instead... bang for buck, overthrowing personal diets is so a huge ask for such a small return. Just IMO.

Perhaps taking some time to further educate yourself about the problem would be beneficial. While I understand it's a complex issue, disregarding solutions about which one has minimal knowledge can be counterproductive. IMHO.