It's not just old coal that's having its death notice written, meat-eating is also in the sights of climate change campaigners.

We have to say, we can't see most of this generation giving up meat any time soon. People love eating meat. It tastes too good.

It's not so good when animals have to suffer for our meat-eating pleasure, but the animal welfare movement is rising through the younger generations.

Combine this with climate awareness and it's not hard to envisage a future with radically different diets to today.

Some experts like University of Newcastle Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics Clare Collins believe becoming "flexitarian" is more practical at the moment. That is, focusing on vegetarian meals while sometimes consuming food like red meat, poultry and seafood.

She suggests having a meat-free meal a couple of nights a week, using the likes of lentils, chickpeas, soya beans or red kidney beans for protein.

We gave the Beyond Meat burger patties from Woolies and Coles a go recently. They were pretty good. Tasted like meat, too. It's made of pea, rice and mung bean protein and potato starch.

Anyhow, the so-called Plant Based Treaty was launched at COP26 Glasgow.

Musician Moby, a spokesperson for the treaty plan, called for a global agreement on a shift to a plant-based food system.

"We face a climate catastrophe and especially a methane emergency," Moby said.

"We need to strike a global agreement at COP26 about a shift to a plant-based food system. We are on track to hit 1.5C degrees warming around 2030 and 2C degrees warming around 2040. This would lead to catastrophic climate impacts such as increased heatwaves, more intense hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, food shortages, violent weather patterns, sea level rise, climate refugees, coral bleachings and the ongoing mass extinction of thousands, tens of thousands or millions of species."

Moby says humanity should be cutting all three greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

"Our biggest chance of limiting temperature rises in the next 25 years is cutting methane," he said.

"The Paris Agreement is completely silent on animal agriculture but a third of methane emissions come from animal agriculture.

"We can all make a difference. Fight climate change simply with diet change."

The International Energy Agency says the "largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, responsible for around a quarter of the total, closely followed by the energy sector, which includes emissions from coal, oil, natural gas and biofuels".

The Plant Based Treaty seeks to "halt the expansion of animal agriculture and deforestation", while redirecting subsidies and taxes as incentives for a shift to a plant-based food system.

Plant Based Treaty global campaign co-ordinator Anita Krajnc said: "In the IPCC's first scientific report, the pre-industrial levels of methane were reported at 800 parts per billion.

"By 1990, they increased to 1720 and are currently at 1900, more than doubling. We are facing 1.5 degrees warming sooner because of the methane emergency. Moby is lending his celebrity status to raise the alarm bells on the looming climate catastrophe."

This makes sense as Moby did once release a track called "Extreme Ways".

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