Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World

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The increasingly pervasive feeling of sadness and loss for a world that’s being irreversibly altered". Though occasionally weighed down by the philosophical/linguistic analysis, Albrecht offers several interesting frameworks – in particular, the Symbiocene – that provide fruitful territory for artists to imagine into being. While some of the words mean little to me, either they aren't something I feel or the obscure etymology and formation meant they were hard to follow. His study helps us to better understand the traumatism felt, for example, when The Hunter Valley farmers saw their farming land converted into coal pits. Then the term "Jihad" is thrown around in bizarre ways, and the woes of masculinity in the 21st century are solved by channeling the "ALPHA" MALE SENTIMENTS into "GREEN MUSCLE" for "WW3".

But the question I have now is if it’s really the new terminology that we lack to finally feel motivated enough to take actual action in battling climate change?Starting with a recently defined negative earth emotion, 'solastalgia', the reader is taken on a psycho-terratic (psyche-earth) journey through all of the earth emotions and feelings in use in the public and academic literature. How do we possibly process the overwhelming information about climate change, and how it will impact on the places we know? The final chapter, which reads like a science fiction imagining of a utopia, is uplifting and heartwarming, and presents a vision of a positive future that is rarely found in literature on the devastating effects of the Anthropocene.

When I did move back home, I was desolate to discover the ‘big tree’ that we used to race to at the end of the street had been felled.As a result, this will have to lead to a ‘ Sumbiocracy’ – new forms of mutually beneficial government. Ultimately, the readers have to navigate their local landscape with all the pitfalls and challenges on their own. Biophilia: an older term, first deployed by Eric Fromm in 1964, to mean a love of life, and a reverence for everything in humanity that enhances life and growth in nature, establishing it as an ethical good.

The author neither commits to the undesirable implications of expanding the idea of conservation of endemic nature to cultures (i. Part of Macfarlane’s book which most captivated me was where he looks at language, and the challenge to get beyond the literal – for example, the ‘language of plants’, rather than just the language that is used to speak ‘of plants’.With the current and coming generations, "Generation Symbiocene," Albrecht sees reason for optimism. And 'GO-DUTCH' - splitting the bill equally, sharing experiences between those high profile clients I've had the joy to work with, and those more socially excluded, particularly young people. With a new language and means of expression, a wider array of stories from diverse voices can hopefully be heard.

I found the new terms fascinating and intriguing and after reading the book I still see them the same way. At one point, the globalized "melting pot" of eco-systems is presented as "a reality" we can no longer change, and so is the globalized "melting pot" of cultures.

What had been a fairly clear and compelling statement about symbiotic life (with more neologisms than necessary or helpful) unravels into a mess.