We Are the Weather Book Summary - We Are the Weather Book explained in key points

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We Are the Weather summary

Name: We Are the Weather
Rating: 4.3 (239 reviews)
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer

Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

4.3 (239 ratings)

21 mins

Brief summary

We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer explores the connection between our food choices and climate change. It encourages readers to adopt plant-based diets to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Topics

Climate Change Sustainability Diet

Table of Contents

We Are the Weather
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Get a new perspective on what’s causing climate change and learn the most effective ways to fight it.

The vast majority of us accept that climate change is real. We’ve all read the news reports and seen the alarming headlines. We know that there are frantic conversations about time running out. But how urgent is it really, and what can we do about it?

In a sense, we know both too much and too little. We’re overwhelmed with facts but we don’t have a clear idea of what they mean for our lives. So it becomes difficult to take any action at all.

In these blinks you’ll learn why the story of climate change is so hard to grasp, and why we're given such contradictory information about how to deal with it. You’ll learn about a major source of pollution – industrial animal farming – which has not received the attention it deserves in environmental debates. And lastly, you will learn effective and achievable strategies for fighting climate change, one veggie burger at a time.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why vegetarianism isn’t the most environmentally sustainable diet;
how small protest actions can lead to huge social transformations; and
why industrial farming is one of the biggest polluters in the world.

Climate change is not an interesting or believable story, so people aren’t motivated to fight it.

If you think about major political movements like the civil rights movement or the fight to end apartheid in South Africa, your mind will latch onto a memorable story. Like Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of the bus. Or Nelson Mandela walking out of jail after 27 years and instantly forgiving his oppressors. These stories have heroes, and villains. They also have a clear timeline: we know when the fight started and when the war was won.

The story of the fight against climate change has no such clarity. That’s because the effects are felt all over the world in so many different ways. We’re told that a hurricane in New York or the submergence of an island in the Pacific are all related to this thing called climate change, but exactly how and why they’re connected remains unclear.

The fact that the story of climate change is so vague and complex makes it difficult for people to engage with. Researchers from the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University found that when people were able to clearly visualize the victim of a tragedy, they were more likely to sympathize and donate money to them. Millions are affected by climate change and hundreds of millions more people will be affected in the future. This means there is no specific victim that people can relate to. Subsequently, we find it harder to feel emotionally invested in the story.

The idea of hundreds of millions of people being affected by climate change is not only abstract, it’s also terrifying. These kinds of statistics and predictions make climate change feel almost too enormous and terrible to be true.

Our inability to comprehend climate change is similar to people’s reactions to the Holocaust during World War II. Few had ever encountered a situation of this particular scale and terror before. That meant that even when they heard eye-witness accounts testifying that Jewish people were being murdered in extermination camps, they struggled to believe it.

Even though the story of climate change is vague and alienating, we have to find ways to engage with it – rationally if not emotionally. This is a story we can’t afford to ignore.

We’re not wired to respond to abstract threats like climate change.

Imagine your child is playing on a climbing frame. They lean out too far and look like they’re about to fall off a two metre ledge. What do you do? Chances are you dash towards the climbing frame with a speed you didn’t know you possessed! Now imagine that someone tells you that something called climate change could affect your child’s life to an unimaginable degree at some stage in the future. What do you do? Chances are, you will do nothing at all.

Humans have evolved over millions of years to be able to deal with threats to their survival. We’re wired to deal with threats which are right in front of our faces, though, like children falling off climbing frames. We’re not designed to respond to abstract things which will affect us in the future, like climate change.

We’re given confusing, misleading information about how to prevent climate change.

Even if you’re extremely motivated to fight toward preventing climate change, it’s hard to know where to begin. It doesn’t help that a lot of the information we’re given is incorrect or incomplete.

Let’s start with incorrect information. There is evidence that major oil and gas companies, such as Exxon, already knew about the dangers of global warming in the 1950s, an incredible 70 years ago. However, the industry responded to this knowledge by creating a disinformation campaign and publishing false accounts that minimized the risks.

Fighting climate change will require both “top-down” and “bottom-up” activism.

What can we as individuals possibly do to fight climate change? Faced with such mammoth opponents as Big Oil, it can feel like anything we do will be useless. What can we achieve by waving a sign at a protest march?

It’s understandable why people feel these doubts. After all, it’s now popular to say that individuals cannot fight against climate change, because it is the corporations who are responsible for the vast majority of the pollution that is causing it. However, that is a simplistic way of looking at it. Corporations, too, are made up of individuals. Furthermore, we as individuals support corporations and the way that they pollute when we buy their products.

Industrial animal farming is one of the leading causes of climate change.

When we imagine farms we usually think of cows frolicking in green pastures. We don’t typically think of them as being a source of pollution. So it may come as a surprise to learn that the animal farming industry is one of the main sources of harmful greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

Since the advent of what is known as “factory farming” in the 1960s, huge numbers of animals have been concentrated on enormous plots of land, with terrible consequences for the environment.

The best way to save the planet is to stop eating animal products for breakfast and lunch.

The statistics about the environmental impact of animal farming are very alarming. However, on a positive note, they point to an achievable way that we really can slow the progress of climate change: eating less meat and fewer animal products like milk or eggs.

This is one of the fastest ways to fight climate change. Ending our reliance on fossil fuels is also very important, but it’s not something we can do quickly. Even if all the countries in the world held a summit tomorrow and miraculously agreed to abandon fossil fuels, it would still take more than 20 years to transition to using alternative energy sources.

It’s already too late to prevent the disasters caused by climate change – but that doesn’t mean we should give up.

Planet Earth seems endlessly bountiful, but it in fact has finite resources which are being used up quickly. Essentially, we are running up a large debt to the Earth that we can’t possibly repay.

Since the 1980s, we have been consuming natural resources at a rate that is much higher than the Earth can supply. Stripping the Earth of its resources, such as its forests, has knock-on effects for global warming as there are fewer left to absorb the massive amounts of greenhouse gases we are generating. This means that we are entering a phase of what is called “runaway climate change,” where positive feedback loops amplify the damage we’ve already caused in ways that we can’t control.

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What is We Are the Weather about?

We Are the Weather (2019) is a rigorous investigation of climate change, what it means and why humans seem so powerless to tackle it. Jonathan Safran Foer argues that while climate change is terrifying and hard to understand, there is a very simple action that we can take: By leaving out meat and animal products for breakfast and lunch, we can make a huge contribution to the health of the planet.

We Are the Weather Review

We Are the Weather (2019) by Jonathan Safran Foer is a thought-provoking book that explores the impact of our diet on the environment. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It offers compelling evidence on how our food choices contribute to climate change, urging readers to reconsider their eating habits for the greater good.
Combining personal anecdotes, scientific research, and cultural insights, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of the food industry's environmental impact.
With its accessible and engaging writing, the book keeps readers captivated, making the complex topic of climate change accessible and relatable.

Best quote from We Are the Weather

Social change, much like climate change, is caused by multiple chain reactions that occur simultaneously.

—Jonathan Safran Foer

Who should read We Are the Weather?

People who want to save the planet, but feel paralyzed by what first step to take
Psychology buffs who are interested in group dynamics, and what motivates people to act
Would-be vegans who need a bit more persuasion to take the plunge

About the Author

Jonathan Safran Foer is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. His previous nonfiction book Eating Animals became a New York Times bestseller, and was turned into a documentary which won the Environmental Media Association Award in 2019. Safran Foer is a board member for Farm Forward – a non-profit organization promoting sustainable eating.

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