[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: Thank you.
How's everybody doing?
So I wrote this book,
"We Are the Weather."
And it's largely about--
it's sort of a personal
investigation into why
I found myself saying
so often over the course
of the last few years,
somebody has to do something.
Somebody has to do something.
If I would see images of the
Amazon burning or a superstorm
approaching the coast or
the wildfires in California
or any of the couple dozen
other things that we now see--
pieces of evidence
of the present impact
of climate change, I would
say, we have to do something.
And I would have
really strong emotions
when I would look at those
images, like anger or despair.
Or sometimes I would
feel motivated.
But then the second I
wasn't looking at them,
if I would turn away or
the news would turn away,
I would just kind
of go back to life
as it was and not really
think about it that much.
If somebody asked
me, do you care?
I would say, yes,
of course I care.
But if someone were
observing my life,
it would probably seem like
I didn't care very much.
How many people in
this room believe
in the science of
climate change, which
maybe is described
the world is warming
because of human activities.
OK, so every single
person in this room.
As it turns out, almost
every single person
now acknowledges the
science of climate change.
In America, 91%
of those asked say
they acknowledge the
science of climate change.
Twice as many Americans believe
in the existence of Bigfoot
as deny the existence
of climate change.
70% of Americans
have said they wished
America would have stayed in
the Paris Climate Accords,
and that includes the
majority of Republicans.
I think there's a sort
of misunderstanding
about the balance of people who
are accepters of the science
and deniers of the science.
And a lot of us have the
impression that about half
of the country doesn't
believe that it's happening,
when, in fact, there's a very
small slice of the country that
doesn't believe
that it's happening,
including the president,
unfortunately, but only
about 9% of Americans.
But it sort of begs
another question,
which is, what do you
mean when you say,
"believes that it's happening"?
Like, is saying
that you acknowledge
the science of climate change
to believe that it's happening?
I want to read just, like,
a page or two from the book.
I'm not going to
do much reading.
This is the only
reading, in fact,
that I'm going to do
at all while I'm here.
'Cause I think it's
a subject that's
best served with conversation.
But this will give
you a sense of sort
of where the book is coming
from and where I'm coming from
and what I mean when I say,
what does it mean, actually,
to believe that climate
change is happening?
"In 1942, a 28-year-old Catholic
in the Polish underground,
Jan Karski, embarked
on a mission
to travel from Nazi
occupied Poland to London,
and ultimately, America, to
inform world leaders of what
the Germans were perpetrating.
In anticipation
of his journey, he
met with several
resistance groups,
accumulating information
and testimonies
to bring to the west.
After surviving as perilous a
journey as could be imagined,
Karski arrived in
Washington, DC in June 1943.
There, he met with Supreme Court
Justice Felix Frankfurter, one
of the great legal minds
in American history
and himself a Jew.
After hearing Karski's account
of the clearing of the Warsaw
ghetto and of exterminations
in the concentration camps,
after asking him a
series of increasingly
specific questions, like, what's
the height of the wall that
separates the ghetto from
the rest of the city,
Frankfurter paced the room in
silence, then took his seat
and said, 'Mr. Karski, a
man like me talking to a man
like you must be totally frank.
So I must say that I'm unable
to believe what you told me.'
When Karski's colleague
pleaded with Frankfurter
to accept Karski's
account, Frankfurter
responded, 'I didn't say
that this young man is lying.
I said that I am
unable to believe him.
My mind and my heart, they're
made in such a way that I
cannot accept it.'
Frankfurter didn't question the
truthfulness of Karski's story.
He didn't dispute that the
Germans were systematically
murdering the Jews of Europe--
his own relatives.
And he didn't respond that while
he was persuaded and horrified,
there was nothing he could do.
Rather, he admitted not only his
inability to believe the truth,
but his awareness
of that inability.
Our minds and hearts are well
built to perform certain tasks
and poorly designed for others.
We're good at things
like calculating
the path of a hurricane and
bad at things like deciding
to get out of its way.
Because we evolved over
hundreds of millions of years
in settings that bear
little resemblance
to the modern world, we're
often led to desires, fears,
and indifferences that
neither correspond nor respond
to modern realities.
We're disproportionately drawn
to immediate and local needs.
We crave fats and
sugars, which are
bad for people who
live in a world
of their ready availability.
We hyper vigilantly watch
our children on jungle gyms,
despite the many greater risks
to their health that we ignore,
while remaining indifferent
to what is lethal, but feels
like it's over there.
Although many of climate changes
accompanying calamities--
extreme weather events, floods,
and wildfires, displacement
and resource scarcity
chief among them--
are vivid, personal,
and suggestive
of a worsening
situation, they just
don't feel that
way in aggregate.
They feel abstract and distant
and isolated, rather than like
beams of an ever
strengthening narrative.
So-called climate change deniers
reject the conclusion that 97%
of climate scientists
have reached--
the planet is warming
because of human activity.
But what about
those of us who say
we accept the reality of
human caused climate change?
We may not think that
the scientists are lying,
but are we able to
believe what they tell us?
Such a belief would
surely awaken us
to the urgent ethical
imperative attached to it,
shake our collective
conscience, and render
us willing to make small
sacrifices in the present
to avoid cataclysmic
ones in the future.
Intellectually
accepting the truth
isn't virtuous in and of itself.
And it won't save us.
As a child, I was often told,
'You know better,' when I did
something that I
shouldn't have done,
knowing what's the
difference between a mistake
and an offense.
If we accept a factual
reality that we're
destroying the planet, but
are unable to believe it,
we are no better than those
who deny the existence of human
caused climate change.
Justice 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?"
So the book is largely
about this challenge
to somehow summon
the right feelings
or somehow summon belief
about climate change,
which we know about, and what
to do with the problem of maybe
being unable to summon
the right feelings
or being unable to believe, and
how can we change our habits
and just change our norms
of living so that we're
doing the right thing,
even if we're not
inspired to do the right thing.
And it's uncontroversial that
four individual activities
matter more than any others.
They are flying less,
living car free,
as opposed to having a hybrid
or even an electric car,
having fewer kids--
somehow controlling
overpopulation--
and eating a plant based diet.
So 85% of Americans
drive to work.
And most of the cities
that we live in--
not all, but most--
were designed to require cars.
More than half of the flights
that are taken in America
are either for work or for
non-leisure personal purposes,
like visiting a sick relative.
And most people
aren't in the process
of deciding whether or not to
have a kid in any given moment.
So those three things we
absolutely need to work on,
but it's not as easy as just
saying, like, hey, stop flying.
Hey, stop driving.
No more kids.
But food is a
little bit different
because for most of us,
for everybody in this room,
for sure, it's an unconstrained,
unrestrained choice.
We eat what we want to eat, and
we make that choice three times
a day.
And it's the only one
of those four actions
that immediately addresses
the methane and nitrous
oxide, which are two of the
most powerful greenhouse gases.
Methane is 86 times as
powerful as carbon and nitrous
oxide is 310 times as
powerful, which is to say,
if you imagine the greenhouse
gas effect like a blanket
around the Earth that's
holding heat against the Earth,
methane is a blanket that's
86 times as thick as carbon,
and nitrous oxide is
310 times as thick,
which matters because we're
facing a ticking clock,
where if we don't reduce
our greenhouse gas emissions
and reduce the
warming, we're going
to enter into runaway
climate change,
where we can't undo
certain processes that
have been started.
So what I've been thinking about
a lot and what I wrote about
is how to make this connection
between what we know
and what we care about.
I didn't ask any
of you if you cared
about the fate of the
planet because I just took
for granted that you all do.
I've never met a person who
doesn't, and this is not
something that is dependent
on your background--
political or geographic
or socioeconomic.
How do we take the
knowledge that we have
and the care that we have
and do something with it?
I had a really unusual
experience and a moving
experience the other day-- it
was about two weeks ago now--
at a reading, where, after the
reading, there was a signing.
And a young couple came up
to me in the signing line,
and they put the book in
front of me, as people do.
And they opened it to the
title page, as people do.
But instead of it
being empty, it
was filled with
their handwriting.
And I said, what's this?
And they said,
well, we're getting
married in a couple of
months, and we decided tonight
that we really need
to have a plan.
Because if we don't
have a plan, we're
just going to probably keep
doing what we've always done,
regardless of what we
know and regardless
of our best intentions.
Their plan read, "Eat
vegetarian unless served meat
at a friend's house.
Eat vegan two days a week.
Have no more than two kids.
And drive no more than 1,000
miles in the next year."
And instead of just
having me sign it,
they had a little line that
said "witness" under it,
and they wanted me to sign that.
And I thought that
was really great.
I thought the particularness
of their plan was really great.
And I felt like I
got to know them
and their priorities
a little bit
and their limitations a
little bit by their plan.
And then it hit me that
I'd written this book.
They were there, having
me sign the book.
I've been thinking about climate
change for the last two years
very actively and
professionally.
And I didn't have a plan.
Probably like a lot
of you, I thought,
I'm going to try to fly less.
That's a good
thing to try to do.
But what does that mean?
And does anybody ever act on
a statement as vague as that?
Does anybody in this
room have a plan
for how they as an
individual are going
to work against climate change?
I don't mean go to a march
when there's a march,
but does anybody have a plan?
So there's one person
in this entire room.
I mean, it's kind
of startling, is it?
If the kinds of people who
are in this room with access
to the information that
people in this room have,
and with the values that I'm
sure that people in this room
have, don't have
plans, how do we
think we're going
to solve this thing?
So the problem of
climate change isn't
going to be solved by
individual action alone.
But individual action
is not actually
just individual action.
When we decide to eat
less meat, for example,
it has a real world
effect without a doubt.
But it has more
than just the effect
of reducing emissions by that
extraordinarily minuscule
amount.
Because we don't
really eat alone.
We eat in communities,
and we eat as families.
And if one of you
decided tomorrow,
hey, because I've been thinking
about this climate change stuff
and I'm not going to
become a vegetarian,
but I could definitely reduce
the amount of meat that I eat,
if one of you said that aloud,
if you had witnesses, then
I guarantee other people
start to think about it.
And there's a kind of social
contagion that happens.
I've never heard a leader who
talks about climate change
share a plan.
I don't hear environmentalists
talk about their plans.
I've never heard Al
Gore talk about what
is his plan, what is he doing.
I happen to know he's a vegan.
It's a shame that he doesn't
talk about that more.
There may be very
good reasons why--
or he thinks there may
be good reasons why
not to talk about it yet.
But so the person
who raised his hand,
it was just you in
the back, right?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: Can
I ask what your plan is?
AUDIENCE: It's not like an
actual plan, but I sold my car
and then you figure
out the plan from that.
It's like being a vegan.
Like, that's not like a plan.
You just put
restrictions on yourself,
and then you figure it out.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: Yeah,
so that's really great.
Our choices for
transportation are one part
of how we participate
in either the, like,
repairing of the world or
the destruction of the world.
But they're just one part.
It's good.
I think that if those four
activities, which I said
are the most high
impact activities,
it feels like a plan should
address all four of those.
Again, the baby
one maybe doesn't
need to have a
place, unless you're
in the process of
thinking about that
or imagine that you
will be sometime soon.
And also, I think some
sort of participation
in the systemic, not just
the individual action,
but here's an
organization that I'm
going to give this amount
of money to this year
or I'm going to donate this
number of hours a week to,
and being as
specific as possible.
Like, when I first
started to write my plan,
I said I'm going to advocate
for da la la la la la.
I was like, what?
OK, so I'll be a
little more specific.
I'll write letters
to my congressman.
And I thought, ah, that
really sounds like bullshit
because that's not
a lot for me to do.
And it's not going to do a lot.
I just know it's not.
It's narcissistic.
It feels good to say that.
Then I will have relieved
a kind of anxiety
that I've been feeling.
And I think a lot of
us have been feeling,
at a very low level,
almost entirely ignorable,
anxiety or alienation
from ourselves when
it comes to climate change.
Because we know we're
not doing the thing
that needs to be done.
We just know it.
We know we're not doing it
on the individual level,
and we know we're not
doing it collectively.
And one good way to have
that anxiety revealed
is to do something.
And then you feel the
kind of resolution
of that anxiety, or some bit
of it, a relief, like when
you close the distance
between the person
that you believe you are and
describe yourself as being
and then the person
that you actually are,
as determined by your actions.
It can feel really quite good.
And it can feel like
a problem that you
had been living with can
suddenly become visible.
So my plan for right now--
and I'm working on it, and
I'm also very, very open
to anybody's suggestions--
is I don't eat any
animal products
for breakfast and lunch.
And I eat vegetarian for dinner.
That's based in
just the science.
The most comprehensive
analysis of the relationship
between animal agriculture
and climate change, which
was published last year,
said that while people
who live in undernourished
parts of the world
could afford to eat a little
bit more meat and a little bit
more dairy, citizens of
America, the UK, and Europe
need to reduce their
meat consumption
by 90% and their dairy
consumption by 60% in order
to prevent what they called
catastrophic, irreversible
climate catastrophe.
The IPCC, in their
most recent report,
said, even if we
were to do everything
that we're talking
about with fossil fuels,
we have zero hope, zero
chance, zero probability
of meeting the goals of
the Paris Climate Accords
unless we dramatically
change how
we farm animals and dramatically
reduce the amount of animal
products that we eat.
So that's sort of my
step in that direction.
And I should say it's not
effortless or easy for me.
I've been an on and off
vegetarian for a long time.
But weirdly enough,
the longer that I
have been a vegetarian, the
more I have craved meat.
I'm not the kind of
vegetarian who finds
it disgusting or repulsive or--
just the opposite.
When I see the person
across from me eating it,
I often think, I wish
I could eat that.
That looks really good.
And if I were like a lion, my
obligations would end there.
I'd say, I wish
I could eat that.
I'm now going to eat that.
But I'm a human
being and not a lion.
And so I'm capable of
balancing different impulses,
even finding a
way to give weight
to ones that are less
immediate and less primitive,
but ultimately stronger.
In terms of flying,
I've said that I won't
fly for vacations in 2020.
In terms of driving, I've
said that I will only
take three cab rides a week.
Maybe that sounds stupid.
Maybe that sounds unambitious.
One of the reasons it's
very hard to make a plan
is because you have to
confront your own limitations
and the unambitiousness
of your own limits.
If you say, I'm going
to apply a lot less,
nobody knows what that means,
and it can just feel good.
If you have to actually
put numbers on it,
it sounds like you're
capable of doing less
than you would have imagined.
And less than feels like enough.
So it's easier just
not to say it at all
and just to say, I'm going
to try to fly less next year,
even though it won't
affect your behavior
at all or very, very little.
And I also decided
that I'm going
to devote a day a week
to working with 350.org,
just the organization
Bill McKibben started,
and also with the New
York City public schools
to work on just
bringing awareness
in terms of the science,
but also in terms
of habits to students.
Because I like the idea
of working very locally
and interacting with
people face-to-face.
So that plan of mine
actually isn't enough,
and it's also a plan
that I know I am
unlikely to be consistent with.
But it's a world of
difference than what I was
doing before I had that plan.
And it organizes my life
in a way that, in a way,
is it kind of relieves
the pressure of having
to have feelings all the
time and having to be moved
and having to
remember my values.
I just am now somebody
who doesn't do
that and who doesn't do that.
And I think that that's a
kind of reorientation that
will make saving the
planet much, much easier
if we take the emphasis
off of our feelings
and turn ourselves into
people who just, by habit,
do certain things.
Like, when I'm in
a store, if there's
something I want to
have, I don't even
contemplate shoplifting.
I don't have to wait for that
well of emotions that says,
like, oh, but you're part
of this social contract,
and you're a citizen.
And think about
the poor shopkeeper
if you were to take
this without paying.
I'm just-- people don't do that.
I'm not a person who does that.
And it's that simple.
So making these things habitual
and starting to, I think,
shift the norms
and the defaults.
In the case of food,
until very recently,
we've thought about it like
there's only two options.
You're a vegetarian
or you're not.
If you're concerned
about animal welfare,
if you're concerned about
the treatment of farmers,
if you're concerned
about human health,
if you're concerned about
climate change, not to mention
water pollution and air
pollution and the erosion
of topsoil, loss
of biodiversity,
you're either vegetarian
or you're not.
Because to inhabit
that middle space
leaves you open to accusations
or feelings of hypocrisy.
It's hard to admit that
these things are bad
and not to stop doing
them completely.
And we've been
measuring our distances
from this kind of
perfection that nobody
is going to attain
anyway, instead
of measuring our distance from
just doing absolutely nothing.
And I think that if we
could flip that around,
a lot of people
would be not only
willing, but eager to enter
that really big space.
So I've said a bit.
As I said, I find that this
works better in conversation.
I always love just hearing
about other people's processes.
Climate change itself
is not an event.
It's a process.
It's not like we're going to--
even though I've used the
expression today already,
it's not like we're
going to save the planet
or not save the planet.
It's not as if we're doomed, or
everything is going to be fine.
We're not doomed, and not
everything is going to be fine.
I think we're at the beginning
of a process of really
profound loss, loss of the
Amazon, loss of species,
loss of coastal cities,
loss of a lot of lives.
And some of that loss has
been determined, but virtually
all of it has not
been determined
and will be determined
by what we do--
what we do as
individuals, what we
do as corporations,
what we do as nations.
It's that talking about this as
a process and not as an event,
and hearing-- when I hear
somebody say like, here's
my ethical accomplishment.
I've decided that in
2000, I gave up my car.
I gave up my plane.
I gave up my meat.
Never going to have kids.
I just think, like,
OK, well, that's good.
That sounds great.
I'm glad that you
exist, but there's not
a lot of room for me
in that conversation.
When somebody shares
with me their process
and their struggles and says--
like I was in San
Francisco last night,
and I did an event with
Samin Nosrat, the cook who
does "Salt, Fat, Acid,
Heat," that show on Netflix.
And really remarkably,
she's now deciding--
trying-- to not
eat animal products
for breakfast and lunch.
And then at dinner, she'll
do what she does for dinner.
And the way she talks
about it is like,
oh, I don't want to do this.
Like, ooh, this is
going to be hard.
I'm probably going to be
inconsistent about it.
And when she talks like
that, I don't know.
I felt really inspired.
I thought, yeah, it's going
to be hard for me, too.
Like, flying, that's going
to be really hard for me.
I happen to find making
dietary changes easier
than she does because I'm not
as invested in food as she is.
Like, if someone said to me, you
can't use adjectives and verbs
before dinner, I would
say, oh, that's going
to be especially hard for me.
Different things are hard
for different people.
We don't all have to
have the same plan,
but we do all need to have
plans and to codify them
and to share them
and have witnesses.
So I'd be really happy to try
to answer any questions you have
or hear other ways of
thinking about these things.
I definitely have not resolved
my own ways of thinking,
not even close.
So I'm always eager to be
nudged in different directions.
AUDIENCE: So with
respect to these plans,
how have you thought
about balancing it?
Like, have you thought,
it's more important that I
don't take flights
or more important
that I be more plant based?
Or how do you weight
the different things,
or have you done
that or something?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER:
So the basic weighing
is just that
unawareness of there's
a kind of hierarchy of how
impactful different decisions
are.
And the four most impactful
are the ones that I shared.
The things, by the
way, beneath them,
things like recycling,
like getting a hybrid,
like planting trees, if anybody
ever does that, those are also
things we should do.
Getting solar panels, that's
something we should do.
Not using plastic straws
is something we should do.
But as humans have--
or most humans-- have a
limited amount of energy,
both logistical and
emotional, it just
makes sense to devote yourself
to the things that matter most.
So I think of those four
activities as the ones
that I put above the others.
Within them, I
don't know that I--
within them, I would only
say I do as much as I can.
I feel like I'm being
fairly honest about what
my own limitations are.
Like, I didn't say
that I was going
to be vegan for three
days, three meals a day.
I wish I were.
I think it's better
than what I'm doing.
But I find what I'm doing
to be actually a stretch
and to be challenging.
So I would rather
accomplish this
with the hope of expanding
than set myself a goal
that I really do
know is unrealistic,
which will end up with me doing
far less than by this path.
AUDIENCE: Hear your
thoughts on how
to induce collective
action, the analogy being,
like, if I was like, I'm going
to make the parks better.
Everyone, if you
donate 100 bucks,
maybe some people would do it.
But if I say, hey here's
a property tax levy.
It's Seattle.
Like, 80% of people are going
to vote to raise the taxes,
but just because they
know everyone else is
going to do it.
So how do we have a similar
process for transportation?
Or actually, I think food is the
hardest one, like you going--
it's inspiring, but how do
you induce collective action?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: Well,
so there's a kind of debate
now about whether individual
choice is more important
or systemic change
is more important, as
if they were different things.
They're not different.
Individual choices, when done,
as they accumulate and become
collective, influence or
compel systemic change.
The fastest growing sector in
the food industry in America
is cage free and free range
eggs not because the industry
woke up and decided,
hey, it's clearly
more ethical to give a hen--
caged hens have about the
amount of square footage
in their cages as there is on
the cover of this paperback,
a little less even.
They didn't wake up and
realize that that was wrong.
People decided, one at a time,
that they wanted something
different.
And a food that you couldn't
find anywhere 10 years ago you
can now get at a gas station--
cage free or free range egg.
So as we have asked
for different things,
different things
are given to us.
Look at the Beyond Burger
or the Impossible Burger.
There was nowhere where you
could find a veggie burger,
no national chain.
A year ago, to my
knowledge, maybe some places
experimented with it briefly.
Now they're just everywhere.
And what I find really
exciting about that is,
it's not really food
for vegetarians.
Or it's not exclusively
food for vegetarians.
It's food for meat eaters
who want to eat less meat.
90% of people who bought
Beyond Burgers in supermarkets
also bought meat in the
period that they were
examining the buying habits.
When KFC released this
vegetarian fried chicken
in Atlanta--
they're going to go
national with it now--
they had photographs in "The
New York Times" of people
around the street to eat it.
And I saw that, and
I didn't think, like,
oh, the future is now.
That's amazing.
I just thought, that's a
bunch of vegetarians who are
going to buy vegetarian food.
But what was really cool was--
well, two things-- one, KFC
painted the restaurant green
that day, and which is to say,
it wasn't like they were trying
to quietly offer something to
a very small portion of their--
or expand their audience
maybe a tiny bit.
They were making an
announcement that this
is something we are doing.
We want everyone to
know we're doing it,
and we're making the
connection to the environment.
And in their
statement, they said
we don't think of this as
a food for vegetarians.
We think of it as a
food for meat eaters
who want to eat less meat.
So the burning of the Amazon--
when people see those images,
they get really upset.
Everybody in here gets
upset when they see them,
and that emotion most often
takes the form of anger,
I think, directed at
Bolsonaro and maybe
at Trump to some extent.
91% of Amazonian deforestation
is for animal agriculture,
either to create land
for livestock to graze
or to create land to grow
crops for the livestock.
If Greta Thunberg said,
hey, students of the world,
let's boycott beef.
We don't need it.
It's bad for us anyway
in the quantities
that we're eating it.
And this burning is being
done for that habit.
Like, we are writing the checks
that make that burning happen.
I guarantee regulation
would follow from that,
and legislation would follow.
I'm not saying that
meat would be illegal.
That's crazy.
That's not going to happen.
It doesn't need to happen.
We don't need to stop
eating these things.
We just need a lot less.
It would be helpful to
eat a lot less if it
cost what it actually cost.
When we go to the--
like, if you go to
a fast food place
or if you buy
anywhere you buy meat,
it's an artificially
deflated cost.
Because there's enormous
subsidies to the factory farm
industry and
because nobody holds
them accountable for the
environmental destruction
that they're creating.
If all we did was enforce the
laws that are on the books
and subsidize it
less, hamburgers
will become more expensive
than the other things
that we would eat, and we
would see less of them.
I think that there can be this
virtuous cycle of people saying
not only with their
words and posters,
but with their
dollars, we don't want
to support this thing
anymore unless it changes.
And then corporations
and governments
will change in
response to that, which
will make it much easier for us
to make the kinds of decisions
that are good, which will
make it easier for the system
to change.
So I think it will happen in
a cycle, but we need to make--
I mean you could
overstate how much change
we need to make in our lives.
But you could
understate it as well.
The science that I shared
was not my opinion.
I wasn't saying, what would be
amazing is if we could reduce
our meat consumption by 90%.
I'm saying the science tells
us that if we don't, we're
going to have
irreversible, catastrophic
environmental damage.
So we can know that
science and ignore it.
We can know that
science and reduce
our consumption of those
products by that amount.
We can do our best.
Those are the things that each
of us has to wrestle with.
AUDIENCE: Good, thank you.
AUDIENCE: So I don't want this
to be like a gotcha type thing,
but I am curious because
I was just reading today
about a bunch of forest fires
in the Indonesian rainforest.
And a lot of that was
clearing land also,
but for palm oil agriculture,
which is obviously not
a meat based thing.
And I'm just curious.
I think that that's
an excellent point
about the sort of systemic
connected nature of our meat
consumption is leading to
this type of deforestation.
But when there isn't necessarily
that same connection,
is there any action
that could can
see that we can
take as individuals
that would help to force
change in these other ways?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: So
it's not as if meat is bad
and other foods are good.
I would never say that.
Industrialized food
production is often bad,
and more traditional food
production is much better.
And that's true for
meat or anything else.
And there are definitely
other kinds of non-meat foods
that are hugely destructive.
It just turns out meat
is much more destructive.
And I don't doubt that the
palm oil industry is creating
quite a bit of deforestation.
But 80% of deforestation
globally is just for meat.
And as I said, 91% of Amazonian
deforestation is just for meat.
But we should be as sensitive
as we can be about what we eat,
and that is not
exclusive to meat at all.
And it's not exclusive
to food at all.
And it's funny.
It's just so
interesting you said
it's not a gotcha moment because
I appreciate that you said
that because
there's a way that--
and it's so unfortunate that
these conversations can have
a kind of gotcha
quality, even though we
don't want them to at all.
Like, I did a reading
the other day and a woman
stood up in this kind of
question and answer session
and was like, well, you
haven't mentioned fashion.
And did you know that the
carbon footprint of a T-shirt
is, and then she started
throwing some statistics at me.
And my first instinct was
to say, well, come on.
You may be saying that, but
what you're not remembering
is that the carbon footprint--
I was like, why
would we do that?
Why would we get into that?
Why would we make our small
disagreements which honestly
aren't even
disagreements-- they're
more like areas of particular
interest or specialties--
why would we make that the point
when our agreement is so broad?
Our agreement is
99.9% we agree that we
need to do these things
to act on the values
that we share in the interest
of our shared concerns.
And what I said to her was
what I meant, which is like,
I should learn more about that.
That is something I
need to know about.
And maybe I'll find out
she was exactly right.
Maybe I'll find out
she wasn't quite right.
But we often--
I think now there's a
temptation to slip into,
oh my god, now I have
to care about that mode.
I don't know if
you ever feel that.
I just felt a little bit
of it when you said that.
Not that I consume
so much palm oil,
but oh my god, now I
have to go look at that?
I have to think about that?
I was thinking about a
story that a friend of mine
experienced not that long ago
when he went with his mother
to the doctor to get
some scan results.
And they weren't expecting
anything particularly bad.
And the doctor-- it
was one of these like,
you have two months
to live moments.
And my friend was in
the room with her.
And she said, why me?
Why me?
And then she said, why
have I been so lucky?
Why have I had such a great
life and all of these blessings?
And I think it's useful
to try to orient ourselves
toward an appreciation
of all that we have.
We have to eat a little
less of a few foods
when we can eat
hundreds and thousands
of different kinds of foods.
We have to fly a
little bit less when
we've had these lives where we
can have the ability that nope,
our parents and grandparents
never could have--
my parents and
grandparents-- really
couldn't have dreamed of having.
What's being asked
of us is so small
compared to what's been
given to us and what we have
and what we want
others to have, what
we want our kids and
our grandkids to have
and what we want
strangers halfway
around the world to have.
That if we have to think
about a few more things,
well, then that's just the price
we have to pay for having all
that we have.
And it's a great deal.
It's a great deal.
It's not a burden.
AUDIENCE: So one of
the interesting things
that I think we have to think
when making these trade-offs
about or decisions
and I find difficult
is how to measure the impact
that we're having, right?
I could potentially-- I mean,
I do have my plan about,
like, I'm not consuming
this type of food,
or I'm not taking these
transportation positions.
But it's very difficult
to compare to them
and to have even a metric
that we understand.
Even carbon footprint is
very difficult in my mind
to even understand
what does that mean
and how do I compare
my decisions in one
area to another.
And all of those, I'm giving
this context because I--
so I'm a product
manager here at Google,
and I work in Google Maps
specifically for driving.
So one of the things that
we're working on is to say, OK,
so how can we provide
consumers with the information
that they need to make a
decision between driving
or taking a train?
And right now, the
first thing that I
mean I'm working,
actually, is well,
at least tell the price, right?
Like, right now, if you say
Google Maps, drive me here,
it's free, right?
When it's not really free.
Well, you take the bus.
It will cost more.
So we're thinking, well,
what about the cost?
Like the environmental impact.
And we're discussing,
well, carbon footprint,
can we calculate that?
Can we put it there?
And we're like, well,
we may be able to do it.
We will need to
do a lot of work.
We could do it.
But would that matter?
Would people actually
understand what that means?
What kind of education
do we need to do?
So anyway, those are the things
that are going in my mind.
I'm like, I don't
really know how
to even use a metric or
a measurement to say--
to decide your decision.
Can you-- now with the knowledge
can you take a decision?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: Well, I
think that's such a great idea,
first of all, of somehow
providing information
for people to consider
when they're--
I use Google Maps and I
look at the different ways
that I can travel.
And the only
consideration is time.
That's it.
If I were given
more information,
it would not be my
only consideration.
It is very hard to
calculate with any kind
of real specificity the carbon
footprint of different kinds
of transportation, and
those numbers might not
mean anything to anybody.
But it might be
that, like, a scale
went from red to green or a
smiley face or a frowning face.
Like, I have a
friend who started
a company about 10 years
ago, where all they did
was send up--
along with your
utility bill, they
would have a comparison to your
neighbors and to say you've
been using more energy than the
average person on your block.
You've been using less.
And they would literally give
a smiley face, a straight face,
or a frown.
And they found that
people used about 6%--
between 6% and 12% depending
on where they did it--
less energy simply
because of that,
because of the information.
Because it stimulates
something in you,
sometimes like a weird
kind of competitiveness,
which is sort of fun, but
also a feeling of approval
or disapproval or that
this is a good thing
or that this is not
such a good thing.
I think changes like that
actually really inspire me,
and I think it have a
truly profound impact.
Let me put it this way.
It would have a
profound impact on me.
I absolutely know for sure that
if I were using Google Maps
and it conveyed with
the full starkness
the difference between
the choices in terms
of the impact on the
environment, it would just be,
then if nothing else, it
would be a daily reminder,
a constant reminder.
It would be a way to keep the
conversation alive inside of me
and I think would be
a really great good.
It would be a wonderful thing
if Google could do that.
AUDIENCE: And just a
follow-up, because when
I was doing this research,
someone brought that
to me that a couple of years
ago, Google actually released
something about
calories consumed.
And that was like a big
disaster, saying to people,
oh, if you walk, you're going
to consume more calories
or whatever, right?
It's better for you if you walk.
It was a pretty big backlash,
and actually, it was removed.
So that was kind of like
one of the things that we're
considering about, like
how are people also going
to react to this?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: I
mean, I would say who cares?
I know that that's maybe not
how you would address it.
But this is not a problem
like weight loss or health.
This is a global problem that
if people don't care about it,
then I would say we
don't care about them,
and we have to find ways
to make it something
that can't be ignored.
And by the way, Google is going
to be a less successful company
if we don't solve the
problem of climate.
Google's going to fall apart.
When people say what's going
to happen to farmers if we eat
less meat, well, there's
actually a really great answer
to that question.
Like, there's going to
be a lot more farmers
as we move away from meat
because 99.9% of the animals
that we eat in America come from
factory farms, whose mission is
to remove farmers and to
remove nature from farming.
There are fewer farmers
now, not per capita,
but in real number,
fewer farmers now
in the United States than
there were in the Civil War.
It's insane.
But there's another
point, which is
what would it mean
to save farming
if we don't save the planet?
Well, what would
it mean for Google
to be like a growing company
on a shrinking planet?
So I hope that there are
ways to overcome that worry.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER:
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
