Take a photo of a barcode or cover
sarakomo 's review for:
We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast
by Jonathan Safran Foer
2021: tl;dr "you should be a vegan, but I'm not and it's hard and here are some personal anecdotes about my family." - JSF
This book is like if [b:Here I Am|31434269|Here I Am|Jonathan Safran Foer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1471029768l/31434269._SX50_.jpg|46010281] and [b:Eating Animals|6604712|Eating Animals|Jonathan Safran Foer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327877480l/6604712._SY75_.jpg|3149322] had a baby. It's a mix of JSF's anecdotes about his family, his own personal beliefs (it often read just like a memoir), and essays about climate change. The overall takeaway that JSF wants you to get is: although curbing fossil fuel consumption is essential to minimizing the effects of climate change, that's not going to happen fast enough. The best thing to do would be a vegan.
JSF acknowledges that that is a difficult ask for a lot of people, and so he proposes a compromise: be a vegan for breakfast and lunch, and do what you can to minimize your consumption at dinner. Okay, I'm on board with that. Unfortunately, presenting that theory only really takes up about ~30 pages of this book, and there's 200 other pages of fluff.
The first 70 pages fly by without a single mention of becoming a vegan. JSF takes advantage of the fact that most of his audience is going to read this book BECAUSE he's JSF, and not because they are that interested in veganism/climate change (else they would have picked a book by a scientist). JSF spends an entire section (approx 50 pages) in an argument with himself (literally, he's trading claims with his "soul"). This all fell flat for me, and left me feeling like JSF wanted a pat on the back for acknowledging that it can be difficult to be a vegan.
Overall, there are some good takeaways from the argument, but it would have worked a lot better as advertised. I enjoyed the personal anecdotes from JSF's life, but that's because I like him, not because I think it supported his everyone-should-be-a-vegan(if-you-can-I-know-it's-hard) thesis.
“Replacing animal products with alternatives seems to be the only pragmatic way to reverse climate change before it is too late.”
“The opposite of someone who eats a lot of animal products is someone who is attentive to how often he eats animal products.”
“Land that could feed hungry populations is instead reserved for livestock that will feed over fed populations”
This book is like if [b:Here I Am|31434269|Here I Am|Jonathan Safran Foer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1471029768l/31434269._SX50_.jpg|46010281] and [b:Eating Animals|6604712|Eating Animals|Jonathan Safran Foer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327877480l/6604712._SY75_.jpg|3149322] had a baby. It's a mix of JSF's anecdotes about his family, his own personal beliefs (it often read just like a memoir), and essays about climate change. The overall takeaway that JSF wants you to get is: although curbing fossil fuel consumption is essential to minimizing the effects of climate change, that's not going to happen fast enough. The best thing to do would be a vegan.
JSF acknowledges that that is a difficult ask for a lot of people, and so he proposes a compromise: be a vegan for breakfast and lunch, and do what you can to minimize your consumption at dinner. Okay, I'm on board with that. Unfortunately, presenting that theory only really takes up about ~30 pages of this book, and there's 200 other pages of fluff.
The first 70 pages fly by without a single mention of becoming a vegan. JSF takes advantage of the fact that most of his audience is going to read this book BECAUSE he's JSF, and not because they are that interested in veganism/climate change (else they would have picked a book by a scientist). JSF spends an entire section (approx 50 pages) in an argument with himself (literally, he's trading claims with his "soul"). This all fell flat for me, and left me feeling like JSF wanted a pat on the back for acknowledging that it can be difficult to be a vegan.
Overall, there are some good takeaways from the argument, but it would have worked a lot better as advertised. I enjoyed the personal anecdotes from JSF's life, but that's because I like him, not because I think it supported his everyone-should-be-a-vegan(if-you-can-I-know-it's-hard) thesis.
“Replacing animal products with alternatives seems to be the only pragmatic way to reverse climate change before it is too late.”
“The opposite of someone who eats a lot of animal products is someone who is attentive to how often he eats animal products.”
“Land that could feed hungry populations is instead reserved for livestock that will feed over fed populations”