We Are the Weather

Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer re-evaluated his meat-based diet--and his conscience--in his powerful memoir and investigative report, Eating Animals. Now, he offers a mind-bending and potentially world-changing call to action on climate change. Most books about the environmental crisis are densely academic, depressingly doom-laden, and crammed with impersonal statistics. We Are the Weather is different--accessible, immediate, and with a single clear solution that individual readers can put into practice straight away. A significant proportion of global carbon emissions come from farming meat. Giving up meat is incredibly hard and nobody is perfect--but just cutting back is much easier and still has a huge positive effect on the environment. Just changing our dinners--cutting out meat for one meal per day--is enough to change the world. With his distinctive wit, insight, and humanity, Foer frames this essential debate as no one else could, bringing it to vivid and urgent life.