First of all it is really arrogant of you to presume these are "irrational life style choices". Who are you to tell me what I should put inside my body, and what is best for me? I deliberated talking about my reasons, mostly health related, but then I decided against it because I do not want to hear from a stranger what actually works well for me as a diet, as if I am not the one living with my own body. That is none of your business. And for your information, I am also no Texas American on a cattle ranch eating beef steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Secondly the whole of consumerist culture is "irrational lifestyle choices". This stupid line in the sand drawn arbitrarily around meat consumption is just self serving bullshit. It is very convenient how others are the ones who have to do the sacrifice and others are always at fault, isn't it?
As I said already I bet my carbon footprint is still lower than yours.
I am in general fed up of close minded people like you. You cannot understand why other people live their life another way, so you decide they are stupid to do so, and you know better how they should instead live their life? Can you be any more arrogant than that?
If you were intellectually honest and really cared about environmental effects there could be many ways forward. For example as another poster has mentioned, not all meat has the same carbon footprint. And there are ways of farming/ranching that might even be carbon positive. Say goats/sheep in the highlands are more adding to the ecosystem than taking away. No veggies are going to be grown up there anyway. And in general I do agree with lowering meat consumption intake in cases were it is excessive.
But instead you went with the dogmatic bullshit approach typical of people who think they are doing something by being annoying pricks in the faces of other people.
The whole enviromentalist movement will always remain sidelined because you seek to force people to adopt your lifestyle, rather than trying to find common ground and make progress.