R12 | ARTS O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| SATURDAY,OCTOBER19,2019
I
n his first non-fiction book,
2009’sEating Animals, novelist
Jonathan Safran Foer investi-
gated the many contradictions
and complexities of eating meat.
It was wise, vivid and often hor-
rific, but as comprehensive as
the book was, it only briefly tou-
ched on how our diets are relat-
ed to climate change. WithWe
Are the Weather: Saving the Planet
Begins at Breakfast, Foer’s latest,
he goes much deeper into that
inextricable relationship, argu-
ing that the climate crisis can on-
ly be solved if we radically re-
duce the amount of meat (and
eggs and milk and cheese) we
eat. It’s a philosophical book and
a personal one – Foer devotes
many pages to his own hypocrisy
around food – but its central
question is a universal one: How
much, and what, are you willing
to give up for the sake of the
planet?
InEating Animals, you wrote
about the horrors of factory
farming and why we shouldn’t
consume animal products. What
compelled you to return to the
subject?
I didn’t think I was returning to
the subject, actually. I didn’t in-
tend to and I didn’t want to. I felt
like, withEating Animals, I had
said what I wanted to about
meat. I intended to write about
climate change and specifically
what we can do as individuals.
Like a lot of people, I have found
myself saying over the last sever-
al years, someone’s got to do
something. And I found myself
saying this isn’t a problem that
people can’t even participate in,
let alone solve, because the sys-
tems are so large. Which is not
untrue. But there’s obviously an
interplay between the big and
the small and the macro and the
micro. I don’t see the kinds of
systemic legislative changes that
are needed happening without
being forced by the actions of in-
dividuals. So, as I began to dig
into that, it became immediately
clear that I was going to be writ-
ing about animal agriculture
again.
Can you explain specifically why
reducing our consumption of
animal products would positively
affect the environment?
The first thing I might say is this
has a way of sounding like an
opinion and it’s important to be
clear that this isn’t an opinion.
But the basic story is that animal
agriculture is either the No. 1 or
the No. 2 source of greenhouse
gas emissions, depending on
what’s included in the calcula-
tion. Grazing animals produce
huge amounts of methane when
they burp and fart. It’s also a very
energy-intensive kind of food
and requires huge amounts of
water, huge amounts of land. It’s
the No. 1 cause of deforestation
on the planet. So it’s really bad
news. But it’s one thing to know
it; it’s another thing to do any-
thing about it. I have a lot of
sympathy for people who have a
hard time trying to do some-
thing about it. Most people have
been eating animal products
their whole lives. Most people
find them to be tasty. Most peo-
ple have a lot of really positive
emotional associations with
meat. So, I think part of the solu-
tion is moving away from the bi-nary that we’re used to – you’re
in or you’re not, you’re vegan or
you’re not – and toward moder-
ation, eating a lot less.About midway through the book,
you have a dialogue with your-
self, where you write, ‘Just 100
companies are responsible for 71
per cent of greenhouse gas emis-
sions and putting the onus onto
individuals isn’t fair.’ Is it fair? Bill
McKibben recently wrote that we
can’t solve our problems one
consumer at a time, we have to
do it as societies or civilizations.I completely agree that individu-
als can’t do this alone. But the
changes that we make in our
lives, when they’re accumulated,
have a known and significant
impact on the climate. And sec-
ondly, they have a known and
significant impact on the culture
and on legislators. I think all the
marches and speeches are won-
derful, but they haven’t been do-
ing the trick.
You know, we’re watching the
Amazon burn and people are
outraged and showing their out-
rage through speeches and
marches. But 91 per cent of the
Amazonian deforestation is for
animal agriculture. We pay for it.
It’s done for us. If you could
imagine a national or a global
boycott of beef, we would save
the Amazon. What some peoplewould say is, yeah, but people
aren’t capable of that. That’s sort
of at the heart of the argument
for systemic change – it’s not
that individual change wouldn’t
be enough, it’s that individuals
can’t change. I agree that it
would be helpful to have help –
if we had certain options re-
moved or the price of beef at the
cash register resembled what the
price of meat actually is in the
world. But if we wait for that,
we’re all going to be kaput.
Whereas we have the power to
make these changes in our lives
right this second.What do you, as a novelist, bring
to this subject that science writers
and journalists like McKibben or
Naomi Klein or David Wallace-
Wells, whom you cite, maybe
don’t?I think each of those three peo-
ple are fantastic and have played
a large role in bringing me to it.
But I think one of the big prob-
lems with climate change now,
not historically, is how the story
is told, and how the conversa-
tion is had. For years, we were
battling ignorance or misinfor-
mation. Now, people know. It’s
not a significant number of peo-
ple who deny the science of cli-
mate change. It’s a question of
connecting the dots, emotional-
ly, primitively even. So that whatwe know, and what we care
about, is converted into action.
So when I wrote this book, I
don’t know that I thought in
terms of, “I’m a novelist, I can
add X, Y or Z,” I approached it
like, why am I having such a
hard time connecting the dots?
Why am I having such a hard
time converting knowledge into
action? What will reach me?You spend a fair bit of time in
the book pointing out your own
hypocrisy, that you were still
eating burgers after publishing
Eating Animals and even while
writing this book, you’re still
eating eggs and dairy. What’s the
value for the reader in being so
hard on yourself?It’s not being hard on myself to
be honest. We’re so used to mea-
suring our distance from this un-
attainable ethical perfection.
Which is unnecessary and often
precludes action more than it in-
spires it. We need to applaud
each other for making efforts. If
you were to ask me in 10 years, if
half of Americans or Canadians
would be vegetarian, I would say
it’s extremely unlikely. But if you
were to ask me in two years
would half of the meals eaten in
American and Canada be vege-
tarian, I could really see that
happening. It’s the same out-
come, with regards to the envi-
ronment, with regards to ani-
mals, but one is based on identi-
ties and one is based on actions.
If we could reorient ourselves
away from identities and toward
actions, I think more people
would act.I’ve been a vegan for nine years
and I don’t think I’ve ever found
it as difficult as you do. But I
have found it very difficult to get
others to follow my example.
How optimistic are you that this
book will get people to change
their diets?I have no idea. I meet people all
the time who became vegetarian
because of readingEating Ani-
mals. But what are we going to
do, but try? What’s the alterna-
tive?What did you have for breakfast
this morning?My kids made me a special
breakfast because the book came
out today. They set up banners
and little posters. I don’t usually
eat a big breakfast, but they
made me toast with peanut but-
ter and a smoothie and a little
fruit salad. It was very nice.Special to The Globe and MailWhatwouldyougiveuptosavetheplanet?
JonathanSafranFoer’snewbook,WeAretheWeather,looksatthetiesbetweenclimatechangeandourdiets
JASONMcBRIDE
Whenitcomestoclimatechange,JonathanSafranFoersayspeopleneedtoreorientthemselvesawayfrom
identitiesandtowardactions.LEONARDOCENDAMO/GETTYIMAGESO
n Feb. 15, 1965, a retired
miner named Rennie Sla-
ney sat down at his kitch-
en table in St. Lawrence, Nfld.,
and typed out a five-page, single-
spaced document that, as Linden
MacIntyre writes inThe Wake,
would reverberate “across the
land.” The 58-year-old Slaney,
who could no longer work be-
cause of severe health problems,
laid out what had happened in
recent decades to the people of
his small community on the Bu-
rin Peninsula.
Addressing his testimonial to
a special committee appointed
by thegovernment of premier
Joey Smallwood, Slaney men-
tioned a miner who died in hos-
pital that very day, while another
lay nearby, “just awaiting his
time.” Slaney himself, having
worked in the mines for 23 years,
was suffering from chronic bron-
chitis, obstructive emphysema,
infective asthma and “a usually
terminal heart disease caused by
lung failure.” The man could step
forward because, MacIntyre tells
us, he had nothing left to lose:
“His lungs were shot.”
Having toiled mostly as a fore-
man, Slaney described how each
day, after surfacing from the
smoke-and-dust-filled under-
ground mine, he and the other
men “would throw up for as long
as an hour and then some. After
a while the throw-up would be
mostly blood.”
The ensuing deaths, Slaney
wrote, left hundreds of children
and women destitute, struggling
to survive onminusculegovern-
ment handouts. Yet, the most
powerful part of the report came
at the end, when Slaney present-
ed a list of 91 men he had known
personally who were now dead
of mining accidents or illnesses.
He cited another 20 who were so
sick they could no longer work.
Slaney’s testimonial made
headlines. It led eventually to
amelioration, and MacIntyre
tracks that. ButThe Wakeis most
remarkable for the long, slow
buildup to this moment, as the
author shows how the mining
debacle evolved directly out of
an earthquake and a tsunami
that occurred decades before –
on Nov. 18, 1929.
The main narrative begins on
that day with a vivid evocation
of white-waterwavesthree-sto-
ries high crashing over the New-
foundland coast at 100 kilo-
metres an hour. The tsunami
washed away houses, killed 28people and rendered hundreds
more homeless. Not incidentally,
that cataclysm also wiped out
the cod fishery, the alpha and
omega of the local economy.Survivors awoke to wide-
spread devastation. Some people
abandoned the only home they
had ever known and moved into
St. John’s or Halifax. But with the
fish gone, those who wanted to
stay were more than willing to
listen when an American engi-
neer named Walter Siebert turn-
ed up talking about creating a
mining company.
Siebert explained that initial-
ly, he could not afford to paymen to work. But if they did so
voluntarily, he would make
things right down the road. And
so, through the Great Depression
of the 1930s, when options were
precious few, the men worked
for nothing or a pittance. Siebert
could not afford to create the
ventilation shafts requisite to
any proper mining operation,
but the miners worked any way,
enduring appalling conditions so
they could feed their families.
MacIntyre does more than re-
late this powerful story. An
award-winning novelist, he rais-
es the book to the level of litera-
ture, first by drawing on exhaus-
tive research to produce vivid,
sometimes unpleasant detail. For
example, he interviewed women
who laboured to ease the passing
of the dying – nurses, he writes,
who had a far deeper under-
standing of the slow-motion ca-
tastrophe unfolding on the Burin
Peninsula than any scientists,
lawyers or politicians.
One of them, Rennie Slaney’sgranddaughter, Lisa Loder, told
him that those who had heart at-
tacks were the lucky ones. “I wit-
nessed a good many poor souls,”
she said, “when their lungs total-
ly collapsed and they’d bleed out
and basically choke on their own
blood.”
While en route to creating lit-
erature, MacIntyre takes a risk
that pays off: He incorporates
four italicized sections he calls
“conversations with the dead.”
With this daring stroke, he
brings himself into the narrative,
introducing the personal pres-
ence that is widely regarded as
the hallmark of literary non-fic-
tion.
This move is only possible be-
cause MacIntyre’s long-dead fa-
ther, his main interlocutor in
these sections, worked in one of
the underground mines later
found to be radioactive.
MacIntyre ends on a cautious-
ly optimistic note because “the
memory of bad luck, bad faith,
bad management and bad gov-
ernment should serve the future
well.” The key word is “cautious-
ly” because “the future, like the
past, will also be determined by
necessity.”
As for Rennie Slaney, he was
62 when, four years after typing
out his testimonial, he died luck-
ily of a heart attack. An autopsy
“revealed deep, debilitating sili-
cosis in his lungs.” MacIntyre
tells us: “Rennie Slaney, like so
many of his friends and neigh-
bours, died because of how he’d
earned his living.”
This book ensures that his
death was not in vain.Special to The Globe and MailKen McGoogan’s new book
isFlight of the Highlanders:
The Making of Canada.AlongoverdueobituaryfortheminersoftheBurinPeninsula
KENMcGOOGAN
TheWake:TheDeadlyLegacy
ofaNewfoundlandTsunami
BYLINDENMACINTYRE
HARPERCOLLINS;371PAGES
Lord’sCoveisseenthedayafteratsunamihitNewfoundland’sBurinPeninsulaonNov.18,1929.Thetsunami
devastatedthefishingindustry,leadingmanytoseekoutjobsinmines.LindenMacIntyre,right,isseenatthe
IronSpringminesitein1945.LEFT:DR.HARRISMOSDELL/COURTESYOFPUBLICARCHIVESOFNEWFOUNDLANDAND
LABRADOR(PANL);RIGHT:COURTESYOFTHEAUTHORMacIntyredoesmore
thanrelatethispowerful
story.Anaward-winning
novelist,heraises
thebooktothelevel
ofliterature.BOOKREVIEW