My sister recently decided to start eating meat again because she's so broke she relies on food banks and volunteer food delivery services to keep herself fed, and they provide portions of different types of food, with meat being a separate type - not eating it would mean missing out on a pretty substantial amount of calories. She probably wouldn't starve, but it would have been a huge increase in stress and effort at a time when she's pretty busy focusing on squinting at her phone waiting for the next terribly-paid gig so that she can make rent. I'm a vegetarian myself but I went ahead and ate a chicken burrito with her the last time I was at her place because she cooked for both of us and forgot that I still wasn't eating meat - she was really pretty ashamed and embarrassed about forgetting and her own "lapsing" back into omnivorousness, and I didn't want to impose any more difficulties on her. There's definitely a lot of reasons people often have for eating meat. I'm more of an "environmental" than a "moral" vegetarian myself anyway (not that I love animal suffering and death, mind you), so it's easier for me to make such exceptions.
As an American, though, I really think we eat way more meat than is necessary. I'd be happy enough just seeing a reduction in quantity consumed, or a reduction of economic incentives to at least make it a little less common for people to eat meat at every single meal, because the sheer amount some people eat is truly ridiculous, and it really is bad for the environment. Not to mention the people who make an active effort to eat as much meat as humanly possible and complain about all food which doesn't contain it and the existence of vegetarians/vegans in general.
Even reducing the quantity of meat consumed in America will be a tremendous uphill battle, though, and I don't think it's coming quickly. The title of the article is pretty overblown. As everyone here already knows, Americans have a real tendency to dig in their heels and resent any changes in behavior whatsoever whose purpose is to help the community at their own perceived expense, even shit like face masks during a pandemic becomes some stupid excuse for flag-waving individualism, let alone a dietary change that goes against how they've eaten their whole lives. I do think that a number of factors are converging that will result in some changes, but change is going to be made as unpleasant as possible, and there's a lot of people that will need to be forced kicking and screaming into inconveniencing themselves even a tiny bit.
This maybe strays a bit too far from the vegetarian topic, but I've had a lot of Chinese and Korean friends in my life and spent a lot of time in their communities, and while I don't necessarily love everything about their culture the general focus on caring about the impact your actions have on the larger group sometimes even at your own expense does have a tendency to make me feel like American culture has quite a few embarrassingly childish traits. It's not great to let people walk all over you or be a huge conformist or always bow to authority in every situation, but life can really be a lot better when most people are willing to take a small hit for the greater good instead of just doing whatever makes them happy in the short term all the time despite the difficulties that arise when everyone acts that way. At an individual level, giving up meat just to help the environment in a tiny way is definitely not something most people here are ever going to be okay with, even if there would be great benefits if everyone did it.