Who is the Weather?

Have you heard of Jonathan Safran Foer the author most known for his fiction books Everything is Illuminated, as well as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close? Mr. Foer is also a climate activist who has written two influential books about climate change, We Are The Weather  and Eating animals. The Wolf Press was interested in his nonfiction book on climate change. They interviewed Mr. Foer, about his viewpoint on climate change and the process of writing books.

 Several reporters from Wolf Press first contacted Mr. Foer in fourth grade while writing for Hawk Mag, a student-led magazine. For over 3 years, efforts were made to contact him. After a pressing email to Mr. Foer in November 2022, he finally replied and invited the reporter to a zoom meeting where Mr.Foer invited them to his house for an interview. In discussing his three-year delay in responding to the journalists, he said “One of the whole problems with climate change is that adults aren't very reliable in case you haven't noticed and you have to hold adults accountable and say to them, how come you said this one thing, but you're not doing it and this in a way was a little microcosm of that”

We Are The Weather is a motivating call to action to fight climate change. Mr. Foer calls the readers to take personal responsibility for the climate crisis and notes that the diet one keeps has a tremendous impact on climate. He notes that the meat industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and that individuals can make a difference by reducing their consumption of meat and other animal products. He also highlights the importance of supporting sustainable farming practices and encourages readers to make choices that align with their values and beliefs about the environment. In conversation with Mr. Foer, he stated “I wanted to be honest and thoughtful about my own searching. You know, I'm somebody who cares about the planet as it turns out, almost everybody does, that doesn't make me special.” He also stated, “everybody who is young does, almost everybody who's old does, almost everybody who's a democrat, does almost everybody who's a republican does.” Climate change is sometimes seen as a political issue, however, Mr. Foer says otherwise “Sometimes we think of this as an issue that is, um, more political than it actually is. Sometimes we think of this as an issue that ” Throughout this book, this issue is addressed. 

Jonathan also noticed the “over there thoughts” that cause us not to realize how real climate change is and cause many politicians and civilians not to act against climate change. This is what Jonathan says about the “over there thoughts” 

“It's not easy to understand what climate change has to do with hurricanes. It's not easy to understand what eating beef has to do with climate change. It's not easy to understand the relationship between the kind of car you drive and flooding halfway around the world…​​it exists somewhere like it doesn't exist here. It's like somewhere out there and most people don't have a kind of primitive or visceral feeling of urgency.” 

We can look at the Maldives as an example. (Maldives is a small island nation located in the Indian Ocean, south of India and Sri Lanka) The Maldives have been literally shrinking because of climate change as the waters slowly rise sweeping away the flatter parts of the islands. They are responding to this by moving all major documents to the internet by 3d scanning their islands and translating all their documents to the internet. However, the bigger countries are not doing that much to stop climate change because people think climate change is a distant threat. Now with an increase in storms like what we are seeing in California, the question arises if we need to take more action.  

In We are the Weather illustrates the many different ways that humans can stop and prevent climate change. As in his book he says that eating less meat and being thoughtful about the size of your family are all great ways to help stop climate change, but it is not that easy for everyone. Mr. Foer offers many ways to take action.  In his interview, Mr. Foer says, “ My goal is not to feel good about myself. My goal is to help people approach a subject that's really important and it's also really uncomfortable. So I tried to write the book with the kind of like humility, you know, and I wanted  it to be accessible, I wanted it to be approachable, It doesn't help the world, it doesn't help anybody if someone picks up a book and you know, says that's not for me.”