You had me mostly agreeing with you right up until the last part...
If you like and prefer people to "entertain scientific fact" as you put it, then perhaps you would like to entertain the fact that the we simply do not have enough arable land to even attempt to replace meat with plant burgers.
You could even entertain the fact that the vast majority of land that is used for grazing is entirely unsuitable for crops - which is the very reason why it's being used as grazing land in the first place.
Secondly, you don't actually say what emissions. Just "emissions" doesn't really cut it, this is not the 1980s, we know a great deal more about how things work than before. Are we talking CO2 here? Methane? They have vastly different levels of effect, even though they are both a contributing factor to global warming.
Answering the topic of OP:
Yes, I am glad we agree on that - a global issue needs to be dealt with ahead of the pure obsession of profits for private investors - we need to put the planet first, not the profits of the already rich, their wealth has nothing to do with saving the planet (beyond we need to take the funds off them to pay for the conversion)
Answering our personal debate about meat:
That reasoning has been refuted many times. Your answer is a popular answer, but not an accurate one, a political point if you will.
The reality is, there is PLENTY of farmable land to feed everyone on Earth, in fact most farmable land goes to growing crops for animal feed (not grazing).....you simply grow crops for humans there, in doing so you cut the amount of required land several fold - the reason being, there is more farm animals on Earth than humans, and we humans take a lot less energy to run vs a cow - its simply scientific fact, a cow is heaver and more massive and needs more fuel to run.
So, thats that answered.
Emissions = any gas that contributes to global warming, CO2 does, methane does, animal farming is a massive contributor.......we can cut it hugely by going plant based.
Relating this debate to OP - we need electric tractors next, it could be feasible to have solar panels on all farm buildings to gather sunlight to power them - charge battery banks and then once full, charge the tractors overnight from that.
Back to feeding animals, this quote from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:
"This squeeze on resources is only set to intensify. In 50 years’ time, the UN predicts there will be 10.5 billion people on the planet (the current world population is around 7 billion). To feed us all, it says, we will need to grow food more sustainably. Dr Walt Willett, professor of medicine at Harvard University, says we could eliminate the worst cases of world hunger today with about 40 million tonnes of food – yet 760 million tonnes is fed to animals on farms every year."
So, going vegan globally drops food requirements several hundred million tons worth......
