We Are the Weather

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  Because that’s too much to expect of someone.

  I agree. It’s far too much to expect of someone.

  So why did you ask the question?

  Because agreeing on what can’t be asked of someone reminds us of just how much can. We might disagree about what Frankfurter could have done, but we agree that he could have done more than he did.

  Yes.

  Now imagine yourself eating a burger behind a closed door.

  I feel ridiculous for—

  Stop telling me what you feel. Tell me what you can do.

  Of course I can eat fewer animal products. And of course my fear of inconsistency doesn’t have to stop me from trying. Right now I feel really hopeful, but—

  Stop telling me what you feel.

  But that’s because we’re talking. Relative to historical traumas, and in the context of this kind of deep questioning, my need and ability to make small daily changes couldn’t be more obvious. But I know what will happen: Time will pass, I’ll lose my reference points, stop assessing my sacrifices on the scale of global calamity, and go back to comparing my life to itself. And no matter what I know and want, I’ll find myself back where I started.

  Don’t do that.

  Give up?

  Emphasize hopefulness.

  But it’s motivating.

  Sure, when you feel hopeful. But unless you’re ignorant or delusional about climate change, most of the time you won’t feel hopeful. So then what? If hope is your primary motivation, you’ll be rowing a sailboat in the doldrums—staring at the limp sail, waiting for it to inflate and relieve what feels like an unfair burden. Noah’s ark didn’t have a sail, and neither does ours. Knowing that no one and nothing will help us makes the effort easier.

  I’m not sure I have the energy to sustain this for the rest of my life. It’s not just rowing—it’s rowing against the current. I’m thinking about the thousands of breakfasts and lunches ahead of me, always having to give them thought, resist cravings, risk social tension.

  Instead of imagining all the meals ahead of you, focus on the meal in front of you. Don’t give up burgers for the rest of your life. Just order something different this one time. It’s hard to change lifelong habits, but it’s not that hard to change a meal. Over time, those meals become your new habits.

  So why hasn’t vegetarianism become any easier after thirty years? Why has it become harder? I crave meat more now than I have at any point since I became a vegetarian.

  Is that so horrible?

  It is when I act on the craving.

  How many times have you eaten meat in the last decade?

  I don’t know. A couple dozen?

  That’s more than you suggested earlier in the book.

  I was warming up.

  Let’s say you’ve eaten meat one hundred times.

  I haven’t.

  Okay, so you’ve eaten it two hundred times. Of the last 10,950 meals, you’ve fallen short two hundred times. You’re batting .982.

  I haven’t eaten it nearly two hundred times.

  You ask why it hasn’t become easier? I ask what makes it so easy.

  Talking to you.

  It’s like that first suicide note, “Dispute with the Soul,” except we have to make sure this conversation never ends.

  I want it to end. I want to put this to rest, as I’ve put to rest the decisions not to murder people, steal, or litter. Some people convert to veganism and never go back. For some, it seems as simple as deciding not to be an arsonist—it’s so obviously the right thing to do, it doesn’t require any thought, much less struggle. But with food, I’m always finding myself back where I started.

  You know that thing about sharks?

  How they have to keep swimming or else they die?

  Right. Except that’s only true for a few species of sharks. Most sharks don’t have to swim to breathe.

  Wrong about ostriches, wrong about sharks.

  But maybe you’re not most sharks. Maybe some people will find it easy to eat fewer animal products, or go totally vegan, and they won’t have to sustain a lifelong debate about it. You just have to accept that your mind and heart are not built that way. And I’d wager that most humans are not most sharks.

  So what do I do when I find myself back at the start? Open a Word document and describe my patheticness to you?

  No, you just have to acknowledge that finding yourself at the start is not a regression. To “find yourself” anywhere is a good thing—it implies self-awareness. If you were halfway through a marathon and suddenly entered the mind-set of having the full twenty-six miles still to go, you’d probably want to give up. But isn’t the starting point further back, at the decision to run a marathon? And isn’t that decision always made with resolve and some amount of joy? It’s why people renew their vows—to revisit the foundation of the marriage. There’s a balance to be struck, as we need to do certain things even if we don’t feel like doing them—we can’t wait for the right feelings. But at times, remembering why we care in the first place can be motivating. What is the foundational truth for you here?

  What do you mean?

  Is there an idea, maybe even a sentence, on which everything else builds?

  Our planet is an animal farm.

  Tell me about it.

  I’ve already told you about it.

  Tell me about it again. The retelling is as important as what is being told.

  We’ve misunderstood what our planet is, and therefore misunderstood how to save it.

  Tell me for real. We have time.

  Our singular focus on fossil fuels leads us to visually represent the planetary crisis with smokestacks and polar bears. It’s not that those things are unimportant, but as mascots for our crisis, they have given us the impression that our planet is a factory, and that the animals most relevant to climate change are wild and far away. Not only is that impression wrong—it is disastrously counterproductive. We will never address climate change, never save our home, until we acknowledge that our planet is an animal farm. That correction is my starting point.

  I thought we were failing to address climate change because of denial?

  That idea is an even more insidious kind of denial than the denial it refers to.

  Tell me.

  But you already know.

  Tell me again.

  It creates a dichotomy between those who accept the science and those who don’t.

  But that dichotomy is real, isn’t it?

  Real and trivial. The only dichotomy that matters is between those who act and those who don’t. Frankfurter told Karski, “I am unable to believe what you told me.” But imagine if it had gone differently. Imagine if he had said, “I believe you.” Imagine if he had committed to doing everything he could to help save the Jews of Europe: convene a group of influential figures to hear what Karski had to say, urge Congress to open an official investigation into German atrocities, use his voice to publicly raise the urgent questions. And more.

  That sounds good.

  But then, after promising all that, and maybe even benefiting from the ethical glow it gave his image, he did nothing. No convening, no urging, no voicing. Worse, he refused even to participate in home-front efforts: he gorged on rationed foods, drove as much and as fast as he wanted, lived in the only house on the street whose lights stayed on through the night. Knowing that, would it matter how he answered a poll conducted in 1943 asking about attitudes toward the war in Europe?

  At least Karski would have left their meeting with hope …

  We dramatically overstate the role of science deniers, because it allows science acceptors to feel righteous without challenging us to act on the knowledge we accept. Only 14 percent of Americans deny climate change, which is a significantly lower percentage than who deny evolution, or that the earth orbits the sun. Sixty-nine percent of American voters—including the majority of Republicans—say that the United States should have remained in the Paris climate accord. The rhetoric and opti
cs might have been co-opted by liberals, but there is nothing more conservative than conservation.

  How do you explain all the people who don’t deny that the planet is imperiled but aren’t alarmed that the planet is imperiled?

  I would probably call them stupid or evil, if I weren’t among them.

  You aren’t alarmed?

  I want to be, but I’m not. I say I am, but I’m not. And as the situation becomes ever more alarming, so does my ability to ignore the alarm.

  How do you explain that?

  I don’t know.

  Try.

  Humans are singularly adaptable creatures.

  That sounds like bullshit.

  It is.

  So try harder.

  We—

  Don’t tell me about everyone. Tell me about you.

  My strategy when I wrote “How to Prevent the Greatest Dying”—the most information-heavy pages in this book—was to be as attentive as possible to my own reactions, rather than to emulate the journalistic style of the articles and books I was reading as research, none of which—regardless of how thoughtful, well written, and urgently important they were—ultimately moved me to do anything. I was willing to trade comprehensiveness, even a kind of professionalism, for a form that motivated me.

  Did it work?

  I definitely convinced myself.

  Isn’t that good?

  I convinced myself of what I was already convinced of, and didn’t live any differently in response.

  So maybe you’re no better than your friend, after all? You wrote a book and don’t believe it; he won’t read a book because he does.

  It’s a shame that instead of having a minority of climate atheists, we have a majority of climate agnostics.

  But you said most Americans wanted the United States to stay in the Paris accord?

  They gave that answer in response to the question. I would have, too. It’s too bad that such opinions are selfies and not carbon sinks.

  So you’re … not hopeful?

  I’m not. I know too many smart and caring people—not advocacy narcissists, but good people who give their time, money, and energy to improve the world—who would never change how they eat, no matter how persuaded they were to do so.

  These smart and caring people, how would they explain their unwillingness to eat differently?

  They would never be asked to.

  If they were?

  They might say that animal agriculture is a system with serious flaws, but people have to eat, and animal products are cheaper now than they have ever been before.

  And how would you respond to that?

  I would say we have to eat, but we don’t have to eat animal products—we are certainly healthier when plants make up the majority of our diet—and we clearly don’t have to eat them in the historically unprecedented quantities that we currently do. But it’s true that this is an issue of economic justice. We should talk about it as one, rather than use inequality as a way to avoid talking about inequality.

  The richest 10 percent of the global population is responsible for half the carbon emissions; the poorest half is responsible for 10 percent. And those who are the least responsible for global warming are often the ones most punished by it. Consider Bangladesh, the country widely considered to be most vulnerable to climate change. An estimated six million Bangladeshis have already been displaced by environmental disasters like storm surges, tropical cyclones, droughts, and flooding, with millions more projected to become displaced in the coming years. Anticipated sea-level rises could submerge about one-third of the country, uprooting twenty-five to thirty million people.

  It would be easy to hear that figure and not feel it. Every year, the World Happiness Report ranks the top fifty happiest countries in the world on the basis of how respondents score their lives, from “the best possible life” to “the worst possible life.” In 2018, it ranked Finland, Norway, and Denmark as the three happiest countries in the world. When the rankings were released, they clogged NPR for a couple of days, and seemed to come up in every conversation. The combined population of Finland, Norway, and Denmark is approximately half of the number of anticipated Bangladeshi climate refugees. But those thirty million Bangladeshis who are threatened with the worst possible lives don’t make for good radio.

  Bangladesh has one of the smallest carbon footprints in the world, meaning it is least accountable for the damage that most afflicts it. The average Bangladeshi is responsible for 0.29 metric tons of CO2e emissions per year, while the average Finn is responsible for about 38 times that: 11.15 metric tons. Bangladesh also happens to be one of the world’s most vegetarian countries, where the average person consumes about nine pounds of meat per year. In 2018, the average Finn happily consumed that amount every eighteen days—and that doesn’t include seafood.

  Millions of Bangladeshis are paying for a resource-opulent lifestyle that they have never themselves enjoyed. Imagine if you had never touched a cigarette in your life but were forced to absorb the health tolls of a chain-smoker on the other side of the planet. Imagine if the smoker remained healthy and at the top of the happiness chart—smoking more cigarettes with each passing year, satisfying his addiction—while you suffered lung cancer.

  Worldwide, more than 800 million people are underfed, and nearly 650 million are obese. More than 150 million children under the age of five are physically stunted because of malnutrition. That’s another figure that demands a pause. Imagine if everyone living in the United Kingdom and France were under five years old and without enough food to grow properly. Three million children under the age of five die of malnutrition every year. One and a half million children died in the Holocaust.

  Land that could feed hungry populations is instead reserved for livestock that will feed overfed populations. When we think about food waste, we need to stop imagining half-eaten meals and instead focus on the waste involved in bringing food to the plate. It can require as many as twenty-six calories fed to an animal to produce just one calorie of meat. The UN’s former special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, wrote that funneling one hundred million tons of grain and corn to biofuels is “a crime against humanity” in a world where almost a billion people are starving. We might call that crime “manslaughter.” What he didn’t mention is that every year, animal agriculture funnels more than seven times that amount of grain and corn—enough to feed every hungry person on the planet—to animals for affluent people to eat. We might call that crime “genocide.”

  So, no, factory farming does not “feed the world.” Factory farming starves the world as it destroys it.

  Presumably that would put that counterargument to bed.

  There’s a parallel argument that I often hear: advocating for plant-based diets is elitist.

  Elitist how?

  Not everyone has the resources to give up animal products. Twenty-three and a half million Americans live in food deserts, and nearly half of them have low incomes. No one would argue that the poor should pay for the behavior of the rich with flooding and famines and so on. But how can you ask them to pay for expensive foods?

  And?

  It is true that a healthy traditional diet is more expensive than an unhealthy one—about $550 more expensive over the course of a year. And everyone should, as a right, have access to affordable, healthy food. But a healthy vegetarian diet is, on average, about $750 less expensive per year than a healthy meat-based diet. (For perspective, the median income of a full-time American worker is $31,099.) In other words, it is about $200 cheaper per year to eat a healthy vegetarian diet than an unhealthy traditional diet. Not to mention the money saved by preventing diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and cancer—all associated with the consumption of animal products. So, no, it is not elitist to suggest that a cheaper, healthier, more environmentally sustainable diet is better. But what does strike me as elitist? When someone uses the existence of people without access to healthy food as an excuse not to change, rather than as a
motivation to help those people.

  Any other counterarguments?

  What about the millions of farmers who would be driven out of business?

  What about them?

  There are fewer American farmers today than there were during the Civil War, despite America’s population being nearly eleven times greater. And if the ultimate dream of the animal-agriculture industrial complex is realized, there will soon be no farmers at all, because “farms” will be fully automated. I was happily surprised to find that animal farmers were some of the greatest allies of Eating Animals—they despise factory farming every bit as much as animal rights activists do, if for different reasons.

  The planetary crisis will make it more difficult and more expensive to raise livestock, as droughts reduce crop yields, and extreme weather events—like hurricanes, wildfires, and heat waves—kill farm animals. Climate change is already causing losses to livestock farmers around the world. In the long run, transitions toward renewable energy, plant-based foods, and sustainable farming practices will create many more jobs than they end. These transitions will also save the planet, and what would it mean to save farmers without saving the planet?

  What else?

  Not all animal products are bad for the environment.

  Which is bullshit because…?

  It isn’t bullshit. It is entirely possible to raise a relatively small number of animals in environmentally sensitive ways. That’s what farming used to be until the advent of the factory farm. It is also possible to smoke cigarettes without harming your health. A single cigarette will have no effect.

  Yeah, but who smokes only one cigarette?

  People who hate the experience, or people who know better and quit before they get addicted. It’s the rarest of eaters who hates animal products. Most people, like me, love those foods. So we naturally want more. I know better but often find my cravings too powerful to override. Like most Americans, I grew up eating meat, dairy, and eggs, so I didn’t have the chance to quit before I got addicted.

  But generally, animal products are bad for the environment?