We Are the Weather

Foer’s greatest problem with changing for the sake of the planetary crisis has to do with his lack of belief, even in the face of truth. This theme runs throughout the entire narrative, beginning with Karski’s plea to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter for help with the Nazis. As we learn from the story, Frankfurter didn’t doubt Karski was telling the truth, he just couldn’t believe an ethnic genocide of the Jews in Europe could really happen. Because Karski lacked belief in the existence of the Shoah, he did nothing about it.

This, Foer says, is the same predicament we are presently in with respect to climate change. To that end, it is not necessarily truth, but believing that truth, that becomes the pivotal tool in the fight against global climate change. Foer fears that he does not have a strong enough belief to grasp the full catastrophic consequences of the global climate crisis. If most climate-change believers are like him—which he implies they are—and then we add the large number of climate change deniers, then we understand humans are facing an epic crisis of belief. It is this, more than anything else, Foer argues, that will keep us from trying to fix the problem.