Oh no

Increased meat consumption did increase our evolutionary development. It also did so at a cost both physically ( charred Imperial Mammoth increases carcigons) and the oldest
pan human measure of wealth; cattle are impacting the global climate with methane levels, water use ( it takes more gallons to produce one pound of hamburger than saved in an entire year for sea showers) and deforestation for grazing. Commercial farming is not without impact either; chemical use ( insecticide, herbicide and fertiliser) causing bee colony collapse disorder from nicotoids and ocean dead zones from nitrogen fertilizer runnoff. The impact of frankenfood GMOs, patenting seeds used by local culures for millenia and charging them while heirloom varietals go extinct along with domesticated animal species from monoculture farming and animal factory farming. The new gold rush to control dwindling water resources predicted to begin failing demand in under 20 years has witnessed gross human rights abuses.
Few people, no matter how well intended on ethical or dietary grounds fullly comprehend our individual impacts. I eat meat; exclusively american bison and the smaller sardine and herring fish species able to reproduce faster than our alpha apex tuna, salmon and swordfish. I eat organic produce- when needed. Some items; ie Kiwis are not subjected to chemical treatment and avocados have these really thick skins. There is just as much marketting dishonesty by the 'organic community'.
Instead of resentment or in your face consumerism toward anyone with dietary beliefs EDUCATION is the solution.

As the father of an organic farmer who's learned a lot from his kid, I'm with you. We both still enjoy a good burger now and again, however.

Best of luck to you, John.
I used to be a vegan for 21 years, but have had to indulge in meat/fish/butter/egg protein for the past 2 years due to a sinus infection precipitated, mainly, by the house we are renting.

KAV I don't disagree with anything you wrote, the issue is primarily one of scale and maybe time. When humans were small groups of hunter/gatherers they just couldn't impact their environment on the scale they can today and with life spans so short it was rare that any problem caused by eating charred mammoth would show up before they died from some other cause. Of course now with billions of humans running around the sheer scale of our consumption requirements, waste and so forth creates problems. Sustainability is the problem - people in good conscience often want to change and make a difference but if they stop and ask themselves, "if everybody on earth did this, is it sustainable? Is it good?" For example I've heard people who want to reduce fossil fuel reliance say, sincerely that they're going to turn to burning wood for their space heating needs - in Canada where its cold a lot. OK, fine, if everybody did this what do you think would happen to our forests? Maybe they'll use pellets from waste wood - fine, but you know all that CO2 that trees take up in their growth cycle? Its all released when you burn it. And we won't even mention the air quality issue - look at Ulan Bator in Mongolia, a city of over 1 million people burning coal and dung as there sole fuel for heat and cooking. If you check the weather app for that city in the winter the forecast often is "Smokey". Where does a person turn? Solar? OK, to supply the world's needs using solar panels you'd have to cover a significant portion of the earth with collectors and you'd still need a backup energy source for night time and cloudy days. Wind power has the same problem. Its all about the scale. Its about informing ourselves and definitely trying to be more efficient in our use of energy and other resources. The power of human will can be formidable but when you have large numbers of people making choices on incorrect or incomplete information such that at best they aren't helping and at worst are actually making the problem worse? Well thats beyond a shame. Unfortunately money enters the equation - doesn't it always? A significant portion of the "green economy" is aimed at separating people from their money. Government subsidies give tax dollars to green tech - so green tech pops up to harvest those subsidies, the actual creation of tech is a low to non priority. Need more money for subsidies? Tax carbon and keep giving your pals those green subsidy dollars. If even a fraction of that money was invested in the R&D to make existing energy sources cleaner we'd actually be moving in the right direction. From what I've seen when industry is mandated by regulators to make their emissions cleaner, their emissions become cleaner. When they need to make their products more efficient they become more efficient. Just look at today's internal combustion engines in vehicles compared to 30 or 40 years ago. They're better, cleaner, more efficient, more reliable, last longer with less maintenance. Its amazing and I don't believe the technology has reached its potential yet. I have a 2002 Honda Odyssey with over 330,000 kms(205,000mi) on it. My wife drove our daughter to grade 1 in it and now our daughter is driving it at university. It took us on family holidays, dance recitals, basketball tournaments, and lots of school. A vehicle from the 60s or 70s would have been toast at 60K miles. Sorry for my rant but I believe that the power of the human will properly harnessed and moving in the right direction is awesome and its a shame to see so many well intentioned people led astray by disingenuous scam artists and the public dialogue being reduced to angry attacks and counter attacks. I believe we all want to do the right thing we just aren't all in agreement on what that might be, heck we aren't even in agreement on what the problems are. How human.