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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
I read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals years ago and found its arguments about reducing meat intake to be convincing. I decided to try an experiment and go vegetarian. I've not eaten meat since 2014, and it was the right decision *for me.* In We are the Weather, he expands the argument by noting how our turn to a plant-based diet can have greater ecological impact than electric cars or other climate-change initiatives.
The book takes on several parts, some of it more logical in focus, some of it more experimental, such as the conversation he has with himself. Just as in the previous book, Foer unpacks why the animal food-product industry is so detrimental to the environment and why reducing our intake would be so beneficial to the planet. He also explains the nuance of why more people, particularly in the West, are NOT on a plant-based diet. Here, he notes that he does not often practice what he preaches, either. Another interesting insight is that the people who bear the biggest burden of climate-change are the people who make the least impact. That was a sobering thought.
I've already given up meat, so now I am working on incorporating more plant-based foods in my diet (which I admit is the HARDEST part, because I dearly love cooking with eggs and dairy). This book is interesting and should provoke some hard but necessary conversations we need to have immediately about how we can combat climate change in simple but effective means.
The book takes on several parts, some of it more logical in focus, some of it more experimental, such as the conversation he has with himself. Just as in the previous book, Foer unpacks why the animal food-product industry is so detrimental to the environment and why reducing our intake would be so beneficial to the planet. He also explains the nuance of why more people, particularly in the West, are NOT on a plant-based diet. Here, he notes that he does not often practice what he preaches, either. Another interesting insight is that the people who bear the biggest burden of climate-change are the people who make the least impact. That was a sobering thought.
I've already given up meat, so now I am working on incorporating more plant-based foods in my diet (which I admit is the HARDEST part, because I dearly love cooking with eggs and dairy). This book is interesting and should provoke some hard but necessary conversations we need to have immediately about how we can combat climate change in simple but effective means.
dark
informative
slow-paced
This week Greta Thunberg's impassioned accusation, "you have stolen my dreams and my childhood" by talking about "money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth," brought many to tears...and others to attack the sixteen-year-old activist. We don't want to hear Thunberg because we don't want to accept her vision of the future.
We have heard the reasoned arguments and warnings. Most people accept climate change as scientific fact. In the popular film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warned, "We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource." But the political will has not been there and many deny the scientific studies as fable.
The first Earth Day I purchased a "Give Earth a Chance" pinback button at the information table set up in my high school hallway. I took ecology in college, recycled when we had to cart everything to centers, limited the use of our car (when we turned in our lease we had totaled 8,000 miles over three years).
"Most people want to do what's good for the world, when it doesn't come at personal expense."~from We Are The Weather
But we also eat eggs and cheese and use the air conditioner and furnace. Some things are easier to give up, and some things we cling to. I can't tolerate high temperatures and without air conditioning, I am a mess. Michigan has experienced more 95 degree days than ever, and we are told it will get worse. I think about it all the time, how we may need to install a bathroom in the basement when we need to escape to its coolness because the a.c.will be illegal or limited or unaffordable.
In We Are The Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer argues that people just don't "feel" the threat of climate change; we think of it as some apocalyptic fantasy set in the future. Like Justice Felix Frankfurter when he learned of the Warsaw Ghetto and concentration camps responded, "I must say I am unable to believe what you told me...My mind, my heart, they are made in such a way that I cannot accept it." The good justice believed, and he was horrified, but it was too much for him to fathom it was real.
Foer's book is, in essence, a long discussion with us, and himself, on how difficult it is to get to where Thunberg is: a deep commitment based on a sense of personal and existential threat of death.
We are killing ourselves. We are committing suicide. We can change our behavior and it can affect the weather and, perhaps, save our lives, our children's lives.
Foer offers individuals how to change the future through personal action. Walk, bicycle, instead of using cars. (check; my husband walked to work much of his career.) Avoid flying (check; I've only flown a few times my entire life), have one child less (check; we have one). Dry clothes on a clothesline instead of in a dryer. (Done that, had the stiff underwear to prove it. But I do have an energy-efficient dryer.)
And eat a plant-based diet (kinda, sometimes).
Our first year of marriage we bought Diet For a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. Some of those recipes remain regular favorites in our house, such as Mexican Pan Bread. Later we collected Moosewood Restaurant's cookbooks and added more delicious recipes. We fell into the cooking of our childhood when raising a picky-eater child. But after he left for college, I read Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma and we became strict vegetarians for three years...then, living with our son again fell back into buying more meat.
I am now in a dilemma. We are trying to get animal products back out of our diet, but I am told to increase my protein. I don't like tofu or those awful shakes. I have been buying local eggs from a farm market--is that ok? Then, there is my husband's deep and abiding love for cheese.
Foer informs that agriculture, mostly animal agriculture, accounts for 24% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. And we know those animals require huge amounts of food which takes up lots of land and energy and water, and factories to process animals into meat, and trucks to get the meat to markets. Plus, factory farming of animals creates environmental problems and pollution. Last of all, eating animal products, as my doctor has emphasized, is bad for our individual health.
Where is the 'upside' of eating meat?
It appears to come down to grilled steaks taste so good vs. save our life and humanity.
"We are the flood, and we are the ark," Foer concludes. Our fate is in our own hands.
And so we struggle on to overcome our desires and the ease of tradition as our children accuse our complacency costs their future.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
We have heard the reasoned arguments and warnings. Most people accept climate change as scientific fact. In the popular film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warned, "We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource." But the political will has not been there and many deny the scientific studies as fable.
The first Earth Day I purchased a "Give Earth a Chance" pinback button at the information table set up in my high school hallway. I took ecology in college, recycled when we had to cart everything to centers, limited the use of our car (when we turned in our lease we had totaled 8,000 miles over three years).
"Most people want to do what's good for the world, when it doesn't come at personal expense."~from We Are The Weather
But we also eat eggs and cheese and use the air conditioner and furnace. Some things are easier to give up, and some things we cling to. I can't tolerate high temperatures and without air conditioning, I am a mess. Michigan has experienced more 95 degree days than ever, and we are told it will get worse. I think about it all the time, how we may need to install a bathroom in the basement when we need to escape to its coolness because the a.c.will be illegal or limited or unaffordable.
In We Are The Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer argues that people just don't "feel" the threat of climate change; we think of it as some apocalyptic fantasy set in the future. Like Justice Felix Frankfurter when he learned of the Warsaw Ghetto and concentration camps responded, "I must say I am unable to believe what you told me...My mind, my heart, they are made in such a way that I cannot accept it." The good justice believed, and he was horrified, but it was too much for him to fathom it was real.
Foer's book is, in essence, a long discussion with us, and himself, on how difficult it is to get to where Thunberg is: a deep commitment based on a sense of personal and existential threat of death.
We are killing ourselves. We are committing suicide. We can change our behavior and it can affect the weather and, perhaps, save our lives, our children's lives.
Foer offers individuals how to change the future through personal action. Walk, bicycle, instead of using cars. (check; my husband walked to work much of his career.) Avoid flying (check; I've only flown a few times my entire life), have one child less (check; we have one). Dry clothes on a clothesline instead of in a dryer. (Done that, had the stiff underwear to prove it. But I do have an energy-efficient dryer.)
And eat a plant-based diet (kinda, sometimes).
Our first year of marriage we bought Diet For a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. Some of those recipes remain regular favorites in our house, such as Mexican Pan Bread. Later we collected Moosewood Restaurant's cookbooks and added more delicious recipes. We fell into the cooking of our childhood when raising a picky-eater child. But after he left for college, I read Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma and we became strict vegetarians for three years...then, living with our son again fell back into buying more meat.
I am now in a dilemma. We are trying to get animal products back out of our diet, but I am told to increase my protein. I don't like tofu or those awful shakes. I have been buying local eggs from a farm market--is that ok? Then, there is my husband's deep and abiding love for cheese.
Foer informs that agriculture, mostly animal agriculture, accounts for 24% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. And we know those animals require huge amounts of food which takes up lots of land and energy and water, and factories to process animals into meat, and trucks to get the meat to markets. Plus, factory farming of animals creates environmental problems and pollution. Last of all, eating animal products, as my doctor has emphasized, is bad for our individual health.
Where is the 'upside' of eating meat?
It appears to come down to grilled steaks taste so good vs. save our life and humanity.
"We are the flood, and we are the ark," Foer concludes. Our fate is in our own hands.
And so we struggle on to overcome our desires and the ease of tradition as our children accuse our complacency costs their future.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
Polemical, but sometimes persuasive. Best bit was his response to Scranton's essay in section V.
Question remains: Will I, we, you believe what we know to be true and act accordingly?
Question remains: Will I, we, you believe what we know to be true and act accordingly?
Uggggghhhhhh. I wanted to like this. I really, really did. It started off strong, but once the cat was out of the bag on what needs to change to counteract climate change, it got all weird and rambly. “Dispute with the soul” was the most uncomfortable hour of pseudo-introspective navel-gazing that I’ve been party to in quite some time. And I ended the book feeling no inspiration to make big changes, unfortunately. Good thing I didn’t need the inspiration, I guess?
I wanted to like this. I really wanted this to move me in the same way eating animals did. It didn’t. Maybe that says something about my own empathy (which is ironically covered in the book) but there we go. I liked that he advocated for ‘vegan before dinner’ strategy but I was underwhelmed.
So... I cried.
Full disclosure: I always cry at those very rare moments when some portion of humanity actually does the right thing. And when that right thing is exploited or overturned. Especially those moments from the 1930s and 40s which saw the highest highs and lowest lows in human behavior, sometimes even in the same humans.
Foer invokes many WWII moments in his discussion of how we are all involved in climate change, both its causes and its (potential) resolutions. Will humans rally the way wartime citizens did, letting their income be taxed, their food rationed, their windows darkened at night? The author shares his own struggles to believe in climate change in a way that actually changes his actions. He looks at everything from Thanksgiving celebrations to polio immunizations to trace how change really happens in society. Can this wave get started with climate change? Or are we the Polish villagers who do nothing as the Nazis approach?
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital ARC.
Full disclosure: I always cry at those very rare moments when some portion of humanity actually does the right thing. And when that right thing is exploited or overturned. Especially those moments from the 1930s and 40s which saw the highest highs and lowest lows in human behavior, sometimes even in the same humans.
Foer invokes many WWII moments in his discussion of how we are all involved in climate change, both its causes and its (potential) resolutions. Will humans rally the way wartime citizens did, letting their income be taxed, their food rationed, their windows darkened at night? The author shares his own struggles to believe in climate change in a way that actually changes his actions. He looks at everything from Thanksgiving celebrations to polio immunizations to trace how change really happens in society. Can this wave get started with climate change? Or are we the Polish villagers who do nothing as the Nazis approach?
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital ARC.