..they are only alive because we consume them

my confession is: I am a reluctant vampire.. I eat my steaks blood rare. I cant imagine a plant based rib eye

There are a lot of great recipes on the internet.

https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/how-go-vegan

To answer your question about the animals, they live very short horrific lives. If everyone went vegan it would happen slowly. We each have the choice of what we eat.

Some info on factory farming:
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/facts-about-the-lives-of-factory-farmed-animals/

ONE pound of beef

I’m a near vegan who admits to falling off the wagon sometimes for the evil temptress of cheese.

The end result is that you would have less and less around to be processed and consumed. Good question, but it's not like everyone would stop eating meat at the same time and we'd have all these animals standing around.