4.0 

Solastalgia

By Paul Bogard & Glenn Albrecht &
Solastalgia by Paul Bogard & Glenn Albrecht &  digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

"One of the penalties of an ecological education," wrote Aldo Leopold, "is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." As climate change and other environmental degradations become more evident, experts predict that an increasing number of people will suffer emotional and psychological distress as a result. Many are feeling these effects already. In the pages of Solastalgia, they will find a source of companionship, inspiration, and advice.

The concept of solastalgia comes from the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who describes it as "the homesickness we feel while still at home." It’s the pain and longing we feel as we realize the world immediately around us is changing, with our love for that world serving as a catalyst for action on its behalf.

This powerful anthology brings together thirty-four writers—educators, journalists, poets, and scientists—to share their emotions in the face of environmental crisis. They share their solastalgia, their beloved places, their vulnerability, their stories, their vision of what we can create.

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Solastalgia Reviews

4.0
“"Once, I read, we nearly went extinct before. The climate changed, turned cold and arid, deserts grewe, the ice did too, and we started to die off. Between 123,000 and 195,000 vears ago, we dropped in numbers from more than 10,000 adults to just a few hundred. Somewhere, tucked inside our bodies, is the DNA map that traces every single human alive today back to that group who survived. We've been here before, and our bodies knor it, our brains and emotions do too; we recognize this place of threat. The fear and despair; hope and imagination it calls us too. Fear and hope saved us when we were fish, and rat-like, vertebrates, and early humans in danger of extinction. And despair and imagination did too. I can imagine the end of us. It isn't hard an earth free of our wounding and a great exhalation of relief. And I can imagine the next evolution of us too, our change into something more glorious. That hoped-for land at the end of the water. This moment of possibility rises before us, none of it yet written except in our bones, our brains, our cells, our DNA, our nature, the thing we are. But I don't know where it will take us. What will happen next. I can only listen to the body, the universe that made it, this ancient desire to live. It sounds like prayer. Like begging the ancestors to teach us how to give up once again." Solastagia, a term coined by Glenn Albrecht, refers to the distress caused by environmental change; the homesickness we feel while still at home; the lived experience of the desolation of a much-loved landscape. It is the emotion that so many feel in response to finding our beloved world so impacted, under threat, and certain to suffer radical change. "To feel solastalgia is to feel pain, sorrow, and grief, but it is also to recognize that the source of this pain is our love for the places of which we are part of." In this anthology, the authors masterfully guide us through this journey of grief, love, and ultimately, empowerment, urging us to embrace our emotions as a force for healing and change. They provide witness and beauty and a way forward, despite despair.”

About Paul Bogard

Paul Bogard is Associate Professor of English at Hamline University and the author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light.

Glenn Albrecht

Laura Erin England

Suzanne Roberts

Lauren K. Alleyne

Roopali Phadke

Holly Haworth

Genevieve Guenther

Susan Clayton

Other books by Susan Clayton

Priscilla Solis Ybarra

Douglas Haynes

Leah Naomi Green

Jennifer Westerman

Erica Cavanagh

Priya Shukla

Marco Wilkinson

Other books by Marco Wilkinson

Taylor Brorby

Other books by Taylor Brorby

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