This was a really good idea for a book, but I have some niggling issues with the book. Mainly, the chapters and the ideas for said chapters, are just a bit jumbled and mixed up in my opinion. There isn’t a concise formatting or structure to this book, which is a bit disheartening because if you are reading this book in the first place, you are generally into the whole concept of this book. It sometimes jumps from point to point, randomly, which disorientated me to where we were in the book sometimes. A lot of the things in this book were just the author philosophizing about the future and the planet in general, that I felt like that could have been left out entirely, especially the last chapter of the book. With that being said, this book had me bookmark so many of the quotes and passages that I just might later buy my own copy for future reference. Here are just a select few that are the best of the best:

“If we don’t act until we feel the crisis that we rather curiously call environmental, as if the destruction of our planet were merely a context, everyone will be committed to solving a problem that can no longer be solved.”

“The climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination. I would call it a crisis of belief.”

“If we accept a factual reality that we are destroying the planet, but are unable to believe it, we are no better than those who denied the existence of human caused climate change. Just as Felix Frankfurter was no better than those who denied the existence of the holocaust. And when the future distinguishes between these two kinds of denial, which will appear to be a grave error and which an unforgivable crime.”

“We will need to regard earth as our only home, not egomaniacally, and not intellectually, but viscerally.”

“Just as our descendants won’t distinguish between those who denied the science of climate change and those who behaved as if they did, neither will they distinguish between those who felt a deep investment in saving the planet and those who simply saved it.”

“An average person’s vehicle emissions are no more than 20% of their total carbon emissions. Even managing to live car free, a far more significant action that switching to a Prius would only be a start. We need to use cars far less, but we need to do far more than just that. Too often, the feeling of making a difference doesn’t correspond to the difference made. Worse, an inflated sense of accomplishment can relieve the burden of doing what actually needs to be done.”

“Do the children getting vaccines paid for by Bill Gates really care if he feels annoyed when he gives 46% of his vast wealth to charity? Do the children dying of preventable diseases really care if Jeff Bezos feels altruistic when he donates only gives 1.2% of his even vaster wealth? If you found yourself in the back of an ambulance, would you rather have a driver who loathes this job but performs it expertly, or one who is passionate about his job but takes twice as long to get you to the hospital? To save the planet, we need to opposite of a selfie.”

“Einstein is quoted as saying [“if the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would have 4 years left to live”]. He most certainly didn’t say that, and the statement almost certainly isn’t true. Just as the widely cited statistic that one-third of all food crops rely on bee pollination isn’t accurate. But it is the case that bee populations have been collapsing globally because of changes in temperatures, among other things, like pesticides, monoculture, and habitat loss from industrial agriculture. And not only will the effects be profound, but they are already being felt; determining what crops can be grown, how they are priced and how they are farmed.”

“According to a 2017 analysis, recycling and tree planting are among the most often recommended personal choices to combat climate change, but they aren’t high impact. They are feelings more than actions. Among the other actions that are considered to be important, but aren’t high impact, installing solar panels, conserving energy, eating locally, composting, washing clothes with cold water and hang drying them, being sensitive to the amounts and kinds of packaging, buying organic food, replacing a conventional car with a hybrid.”

“And although there is a temptation to describe the planetary crisis in apocalyptic terms, imagining total human extinction, the truth is that many of us who live in high-income nations with varied landscapes and sophisticated technology, will survive our climate suicide. But we will suffer permanent injuries… we will be displaced by extreme weather, our coasts will become unlivable and our economy will crash, our own conflicts will erupt, food prices will soar, water will be rationed, pollution-related illnesses will skyrocket, mosquitoes will invade and our psychologies will be changed by the traumas. Being separated from our families in extreme weather events, leaving aging parents behind in places debilitated by drought or flooding so that children will have less arduous lives, competing for resources in ways more explicit and less civilized that we ever have before.”

“There are only two reactions to climate change: resignation or resistance. We can submit to death or we can use the prospect of death to emphasize life.”

There is an entire other list of quotes that I have saved that I equally loved as much as the ones that I have cited above, but this review would be about 6 pages long and no one (not even me) wants to read that. The most impactful thing I took from this book that I can apply to my own life is to only eat animal products (i.e. meat, eggs, dairy, etc.) at dinner. Basically, cutting it back significantly, which is a sacrifice that I can make. It can be difficult to persuade others who have lived their whole lives eating a different way, as the author so eloquently mentions throughout the book. Why sacrifice when everyone around you isn’t? Because it matters, whether you believe it will impact you directly or not, it matters.

We Are the Weather - Likewise Book Reviews

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