I don't think convincing average people to go 100% full vegan is a good strategy. What I would focus on is convincing people to eat less meat, eggs, dairy, etc. It can be a gradual process to even further reduction, or even just a permanent flat reduction is still an improvement.

Convincing two people to reduce their animal consumption by 50% is as good as convincing one person to go full vegan.

I think a solution is going to be less about changing minds, and more about changing incentives.

Meat-free food should be cheaper and easier. Walking into a supermarket or convenience store, one should be greeted with affordable, tasty, plant-based meals. The more affordable and accessible we make plant-based meals, the more people are going to eat them. And showing people that they can taste just as good as meat-based meals, will mean people won't immediately steer clear of them.

Of course this is just one anecdote, but I stopped eating meat for the climate, because of the numbers. People posting papers, making informative comments (like your first half) changed my mind.

I don't think you can change many minds. It would be more effective to make factory farming illegal so that meat prices increase dramatically. People will eat less meat when they can't afford not to.

No individual average person can do anything of significance to fight climate change or have a meaningful impact on the global environment. Only governments or massive organizations can.

If you could do an alternate reality type thing, where one version of you lives a perfect life, environmentally speaking, and the other version lives the worst, the world would be the same at the end of both.

No, I think you're in a bubble if you think that

My dad is old and fat and is out of breath when he gets into a car. He eats cheap sometimes spoiled meat 3 times a day, everything he cooks is somehow the greasiest food i have ever seen.
I have a BMI of 21. I do an average of 18000 steps a day and mountain bike on the weekend.

Somehow he's embarrassed about my vegan diet and gives me tips on how to eat right and tells me that i'm godda die soon for the past 5 years.
I have many friends like that. Bro, i need that protein. You are overweight and you don't do any sports at all.
I dunno, i find it very odd.

Why we can't ignore the meat industry's climate impact

We also need to address fossil fuels, but the meat industry is large enough in emissions to make us miss climate targets even if fossil fuels were eliminated today

To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

(emphasis mine)

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

There's not really a way around consumption being reduced. It's going to be hard to implement any systematic solutions to reducing meat consumption if people don't take that step themselves too

The environment is more than just greenhouse gases emissions

But I should also point out that there's more to the environment than just climate change which is why I would suggest at least skimming things before commenting for the future. The article and even its title ("across a range of environmental measures") include much more than just greenhouse gas emissions.

on the environmental impact of their diets was assessed in relation to greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, water pollution risk and biodiversity loss.

[...]

The impacts of vegans were a quarter of those of high meat eaters for greenhouse gas emissions, and land use, just 27% of the impacts for water pollution, 46% for water use and 34% for biodiversity.

Other studies and environmental metrics

Why best case production of animal products still come out worse than worse-case production of plants

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].

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm

Many argue that this overlooks the large variation in the footprints of foods across the world. Using global averages might give us a misleading picture for some parts of the world or some producers. If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.

[…]

Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy. https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat

Deforestation

Extensive cattle ranching is the number one culprit of deforestation in virtually every Amazon country, and it accounts for 80% of current deforestation

https://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/amazon_threats/unsustainable_cattle_ranching/

Draining desert's water

Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs

Biodiversity loss

Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

Increased synthetic fertilizer usage for animal products

Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528

Etc.

There's a number more but this comment is already getting too long

One can fight oil and gas on a plant based diet just as well.

This is a simple choice each individual makes three times a day, what to eat.

Doesn't need political approval, doesn't need majorities, no investment and no infrastructure required. If you understand how serious the climate crisis is, eating plant based should come as a no brainer. And if you understand, you won't stop there.

It's still a systemic crisis which cannot be solved on the individual level, true. In an ideal world, plant based diets would become the norm through various means. But why wait for that if you understand it's the right thing to do?

industry serves people's demands. it's one way to influence agri industry.

You're upset because you don't want to accept your piece of the pie when it comes to responsibility. This is childish.

The title should trigger you, but not too be upset with billionaires; although certainly you can be upset with them for their much larger pieces of the pie.

Because tradition: see war, crime, reality TV

The only way to win this is with affordable traditional vegan options (the stuff our grandparents used to eat, but didn't call vegan), but with lettuce at the same price as pork and vegan cheese that is 50% fat and triple the price, most people who can't soak their own beans, many can't or have time to even cook, this is not going to work.

It says environmental in the title?

Good thing both of those conclusions are true.

The bad shit is the way cater is raised in the US. In france an exploitation with let's say 200 beast is considered big. In the us some count thousands... There are reaaly big one in europe but it's a minority compared to the us. This is atrocious and I really hope we all reduce our meat intake.