We Are the Weather

This chapter returns to Part 1, Chapter 1 and the Egyptian suicide note in which one person argues with his soul about whether the soul should consent to death by suicide.

In this chapter, Foer takes up his own dispute with the soul in the form of a question-and-answer format. Foer discusses an environmentally conscious friend who refuses to read Eating Animals, even though it outlines a cause to which he would relate. The friend will not read the book because he understands it will ask him to make a change he is not prepared to make.

The chapter explores the many reasons why Foer’s friend, and Foer himself, are hesitant to make that change. Only 14% of Americans deny climate change, which is significantly lower than Americans who deny evolution or that the Earth is round and that it orbits around the sun. Is that a source of hope, asks the soul? For Foer, it is not. He has managed to convince himself of the climate dangers of factory animal farming, but that doesn’t mean much since he already believed it. Foer then talks about the Bangladeshis again and discusses how they discharge the least amount of damage to the climate but, because of the rest of us, take on the outcomes of climate change.