We Are the Weather

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  My older son is about to have his bar mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage into adulthood. Among other things, it marks the transition from being a recipient of what the world has to offer to being a participant in the maintenance and creation of what the world offers others. It is both gorgeous and devastating. He can prepare dinner. He can read himself to sleep. It is complicated, and often painful, to take care of something that you are in the process of letting go of. My son needs me as much as my grandmother needs my parents. But it is also my job, and the job of my parents, not to hold on.

  Whether or not we address climate change, we will need to learn to let go. Even if we were to reduce carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, we would continue to witness and experience the effects of our past actions. The planet will not be a home for our children and grandchildren as it was for us—not as comfortable, beautiful, or pleasurable. As Roy Scranton argues in his New York Times essay “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene,” it is important to come to terms with that loss:

  The biggest problem climate change poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, or how we should put up sea walls to protect Alphabet City, or when we should evacuate Hoboken. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, signing a treaty, or turning off the air-conditioning. The biggest problem we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront this problem, and the sooner we realize there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the hard work of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality.

  Looking at my grandmother, I really understand what he means. There is a sense in which she is already dead—hard as that is to write—and accepting her absence is not only the most honest approach but the one that will allow us to fully value her presence.

  It is custom, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, to say the Mi Shebeirach prayer on behalf of an ill loved one:

  May the One Who Blesses

  overflow with compassion upon her,

  to restore her,

  to heal her,

  to strengthen her,

  to enliven her.

  The One will send her, speedily,

  a complete healing—

  healing of the soul and healing of the body—

  along with all the ill,

  among the people of Israel and all humankind,

  soon,

  speedily,

  without delay,

  and let us all say: Amen!

  After days of deliberation, my mother chose not to say the prayer on my grandmother’s behalf this year. My grandmother is not going to heal, and shouldn’t heal. She is ninety-nine years old. She is in no pain, physical or emotional. It would be cruel to extend the duration of her life at the expense of her experience of her life.

  It is true that there is nothing we can do to “save” my grandmother. It is also true that we can save things that matter—to her and to us. She can spend her remaining time in a peaceful setting. My parents bought her a special mattress that helps prevent bedsores. They moved her to the window so she could see the tree and feel the sunlight. They hired a live-in nurse, for medical care but also so she’ll never be alone. They spend hours every day talking to her and encourage her grandchildren to come as often as possible, and her great-grandchildren to FaceTime. They give her the things that make her happy: chocolate, photographs of her family, recordings of the Yiddish songs she listened to as a child, company.

  We cannot save the coral reefs. We cannot save the Amazon. It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to save coastal cities. The scale of inevitable loss is almost enough to make any further struggle feel futile. But only almost. Millions of people—perhaps tens or hundreds of millions—will die because of climate change, and the number matters. Hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions, will become climate refugees. The number of refugees matters. It matters how many days per year children will be able to play outside, how much food and water there will be, how many years average life expectancies will shed. These numbers matter, because they are not just numbers—each corresponds to an individual, with a family, and idiosyncrasies, and phobias, and allergies, and favorite foods, and recurring dreams, and a song stuck in her head, and a singular handprint, and a particular laugh. An individual who inhales molecules that we have exhaled. It is hard to care about the lives of millions; it is impossible not to care about one life. But maybe we don’t need to care about any of them. We just need to save them.

  I do not believe that the biggest challenge that climate change poses is a philosophical one. And I’m quite sure someone in sub-Saharan Africa, or South Asia, or Latin America—where climate change is already painfully felt—would agree with me. The biggest challenge is to save as much as we can: as many trees, as many icebergs, as many degrees, as many species, as many lives—soon, speedily, and without delay.

  That we want everybody on Earth not only to have a healthy life but to feel at home should go without saying. But it doesn’t. It requires not only saying but repeating. We must force ourselves to face the mirror, and force ourselves to look. We must engage in perpetual disputes with ourselves to do what needs to be done. “Listen to me,” implores the soul in the first suicide note, when it begins to make its case for life. “Behold, it is good for men to listen.”

  IV.  DISPUTE WITH THE SOUL

  I don’t know.

  What’s not to know?

  I don’t know how I’ve gotten this far—learned this much, convinced myself this thoroughly of the need to change—and yet still doubt that I’ll change. Are you hopeful?

  That you’ll change?

  That humankind will figure this out.

  We’ve already figured it out.

  That we will act on what we’ve figured out.

  Have you noticed how often conversations about climate change end with the question of hopefulness?

  Have you noticed how often conversations about climate change end?

  That’s because we feel hopeful and are comfortable putting off the discussion.

  No. It’s because we feel hopeless and are uncomfortable discussing it.

  Either way, it’s hope that allows the subject of climate change to be eclipsed—in news and politics, in our lives—by more “urgent” issues. If you were a doctor, would you ask a cancer patient if he was hopeful?

  I might. Positivity seems to improve recovery.

  If you were a doctor, would you ask a cancer patient if he was hopeful without also asking what course of treatment he planned to take?

  No, probably not.

  And what if he told you he planned to do nothing at all? Would you ask him if he was hopeful, then?

  I might ask if he was depending on a miracle or just accepting death.

  Right. If someone faces a life-threatening crisis, and chooses not to address it, asking if he is hopeful is shorthand for asking if he is depending on a miracle or just accepting death.

  There have been moments when writing this book has made me hopeful, but almost always I’ve felt rage or despair.

  You’ve been stealing those pleasures.

  Hope?

  Yes, but also rage and despair.

  Stealing?

  Not giving anything in return.

  Rage and despair are pleasures?

  The guiltiest. Why do you think New York magazine’s doomsday article about global warming went viral? People were suddenly ravenous for climate science? No, we were ravenous for a vivid description of our apocalypse. We’re drawn to it the same way we’re drawn to horror movies, car accidents, and the chaos of the current administration. And don’t pretend that the bleakest scenarios aren’t your favorite parts to write.

  I’m not pretending.

  Admit it: it feels good to point out other people’s shortcomings.

  That’s not fair.

  Not at all. So pay for all the pleasures you’ve stolen.

  I’ve spent two years writing th
is book, trying to persuade as many people as I can to change their lives. Isn’t that something?

  Not enough.

  What would be enough?

  Change your own life.

  I know.

  But?

  I don’t know.

  What’s not to know?

  Is there anything more narcissistic than believing the choices you make affect everyone?

  Only one thing: believing the choices you make affect no one. As you’ve spent the last three sections explaining.

  Maybe that was all just writing. More stolen pleasure. Climate change is a problem on the scale of China and ExxonMobil. Just one hundred companies are responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Putting the onus on individuals isn’t fair.

  If you were a child, your obsession with fairness would be admirable.

  Forget about fairness. Making this about individuals is naive in terms of what needs to be done, while letting politicians and businesses off the hook.

  But companies produce what we buy; farmers grow what we eat. They commit crimes on our behalf. On top of which, while a lot of people talk about how climate change is a problem of nations and corporations, no one seems to have a plan for affecting policy change among nations and corporations. And decrying the bad guys is no more of an action than marching with the good guys.

  “We have to do something.” It’s the phrase that seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days, the unofficial slogan of our moment. And yet almost no one does anything beyond reiterating the need to do something. We either don’t know what to do or don’t want to do it. So instead we stagger across the battlefield, firing blank after blank without aiming: something, something, something …

  But there is something we can do. Choosing to eat fewer animal products is probably the most important action an individual can take to reverse global warming—it has a known and significant effect on the environment, and, done collectively, would push the culture and the marketplace with more force than any march.

  So there it is.

  I don’t know.

  What’s not to know?

  I’ve already been changed by the process of writing this book. I can imagine doing radio and print interviews, writing op-eds, giving readings in cities around the world. I can imagine stealing the pleasure of righteousness and then coming back to my hotel after one of those events and eating a burger behind a locked door—stealing that pleasure, too. Can you think of anything more pathetic?

  It’s not a great image. But I can think of many scenarios more pathetic—like if you didn’t bother with the truth, or were too afraid to learn it. Or if you knew the truth but didn’t care, or wouldn’t make an effort in response. Or if you tried but felt no remorse when you failed.

  It’s always driven me crazy that my friend—a fellow writer and, what’s more, a passionate environmentalist—has refused to read my book Eating Animals. It upsets me because he is a sensitive thinker who cares and writes about the preservation of nature. If he is unwilling even to learn about the connection between eating and the environment, what hope is there for hundreds of millions of people to alter their lifelong habits?

  Why won’t he read it?

  He told me he’s afraid to read the book because he knows that it will require him to make a change he can’t make.

  Congratulations, you’re better than your friend. Pointing out his shortcomings must have soothed your guilt about your own. And while we’re on the subject of your narcissism, why are you making your patheticness the subject here?

  I was using his shortcomings to illustrate my own: if I argue against eating animal products while continuing to eat them myself, then I am a massive hypocrite.

  Why is that important to say?

  No one wants to be a hypocrite.

  So be perfect instead.

  Don’t do that.

  What?

  Be glib about the real pain involved in trying to do the right thing.

  Don’t do that.

  What?

  Make your emotions more urgent than the planet’s destruction.

  Our emotions—and lack of emotions—are destroying the planet.

  Without a doubt. You don’t want to give up your burgers, your drives to the grocery store and flights to Europe, your cheap electricity. You don’t want to make the dinner party awkward, or have anyone think you’re a drag or, worse, an asshole. You don’t do something because you just don’t feel like it. But as ever, you have your comfort to protect, so you convince yourself that knowing about it—writing a book about it—is doing something.

  So you’re … not hopeful?

  You’re entirely capable of doing things you aren’t moved to do and refraining from things that you want to do. That doesn’t make you Gandhi. It makes you an adult.

  That really isn’t fair.

  From the mouth of a child. Do you know why ostriches bury their heads in the sand?

  Because they think no one can see them if they can’t see anyone.

  Pretty dumb, right? Except ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand—they bury their eggs for warmth and protection, and occasionally submerge their heads to turn them. Humans look at ostriches caring for their offspring and mistake it for stupidity. But we are the animals who assume that the world goes dark when we close our eyes. Mistaking avoidance for safety happens to be one of the most effective ways to kill our offspring. So is mistaking knowledge for action. No one wants to be a hypocrite, but isn’t blinking every now and then better than pressing your eyes shut? The important measurement is not the distance from unattainable perfection, but from unforgivable inaction.

  I don’t know.

  Let me ask you a question: What’s the opposite of someone who leaves lights on in empty rooms, buys inefficient appliances, and pumps the air-conditioning even when no one is home?

  Someone who is attentive to energy use?

  And what’s the opposite of someone who takes cars everywhere he goes, no matter the distance, and no matter the convenience of public transportation?

  Someone who is attentive to how much he drives?

  What is the opposite of someone who eats a lot of meat, dairy, and eggs?

  A vegan.

  No. The opposite of someone who eats a lot of animal products is someone who is attentive to how often he eats animal products. The best way to excuse oneself from a challenging idea is to pretend there are only two options.

  You wrote about Frankfurter’s response to Karski as if he had only two options. Perhaps belief really is all or nothing, but what about action? Couldn’t Frankfurter have done something with what he knew to be true? Perhaps he wasn’t going to starve himself in front of the White House, dying a slow death while the world looked on. But surely he could have convened a group of influential figures to hear what Karski had to say, or urged Congress to open an official investigation into German atrocities, or simply used his voice to publicly raise the urgent questions?

  We can imagine his struggles to believe Karski during that meeting, but what about when, only a couple of years later, he saw the first images of the concentration camps? Do you think he believed what he was seeing then? And when he looked into the sunken eyes of those starved fathers and mothers, the heaps of dead sons and daughters? When the Supreme Court justice judged himself, do you think he felt complicit in genocide? Or just pathetic?

  That’s not fair.

  That’s what Frankfurter’s grandson would probably say. Only so much can be expected of someone in a moment of crisis. But you’re the grandson of a Holocaust survivor whose siblings were raped and murdered, whose parents were shot while holding babies, whose grandparents were burned alive. What do you think would be fair to expect of Frankfurter?

  But people really do have limits. Those limits are not their choice, and not their fault, no matter how harshly they are judged by history.

  I don’t know.

  What’s not to know?

  Maybe we u
nderestimate some limits, and overvalue some actions. The man who lifted the car off the trapped bicyclist exceeded his physical limits. But did he then go home and campaign for designated bike lanes and more traffic lights? Because bicyclists being killed by automobiles is a systemic problem, not one solved by singular acts of hysterical strength. Is it fair to ask if he did enough?

  No, it’s not fair, because he—

  Did Karski do enough? You’ve made Frankfurter’s lack of belief the subject of the story, but what about Karski’s limits? He left Frankfurter without obtaining guarantees that a way had been decided upon to save the Jews. He didn’t refuse food and drink and die a slow death in the justice’s chambers. Is it fair for us to judge him? What about those whose lives, and children’s lives, depended on his mission’s success? Would it have been fair for them to judge him?

  He disguised himself as a Jew—donned a yellow armband, wore a Star of David—in order to smuggle himself into the Warsaw Ghetto to document conditions. He infiltrated a Nazi death camp so that he could share its truths with the world. Yes, he did enough.

  What about your grandmother?

  I’m sure she would agree.

  That’s not what I mean. It feels cruel, even depraved, to ask if your grandmother did enough—

  Don’t.

  —but did she do enough?

  Stop.

  She fled her shtetl because she knew she “had to do something.” She knew. Her sister followed her outside, gave your grandmother her only pair of shoes, and said, “You’re so lucky to be leaving.” Another way of saying, “Take me, too.” Perhaps her sister was too young to make the trip and bringing her would have doomed them both. Perhaps what your grandmother believed at the time was far less than we assume she believed. But you daydream about going from house to house of her shtetl, grabbing the faces of those who would stay, screaming, “You have to do something!” Why didn’t your grandmother grab their faces?