Hi, Phillip, I'm aware this was a very short article which didn't address any of the issues in detail, but no-where does is say meat consumption is the only problem.

However, eating meat is the third largest cause of climate change and going vegan is probably the single most impactful thing we can do as individuals to help slow down or reverse that change.

Some of the 'other' problems you mentioned are also part of the same issue - for example, it's been estimated that up to 46% of ocean plastic is fishing nets. The 500,000 and 1 million tons of new fishing net being added to this every year wouldn't be happening in a vegan world.