Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World

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Glenn suggest that during this massive environmental change and due to human desolation and separation from (biological) nature we are entering "the age of solastalgia" and "emotional death" (with respect to nature). Psychoterratic’ is a term coined by Albrecht relating to states of our positive and negative wellbeing linked directly to the Earth and the environment. Without a new ~scene "this Earth will be “sacrificed” and the Anthropocene will go cosmic, even universal".

Defending themselves against charges of inaction or incompetence, the same politician responds in a monotone voice, from a pre-scripted reply that “we’re straining every sinew”.While often Albrecht's writing is intelligent and deals with nuance he also at times comes across as naïve. When exploring all the aspects of what goes to make up a ‘place’, as with the fragment pieces of a family tree it can become more difficult to discern with each year if you don’t already know the story.

Topophobic: “Fear of entering a biophysical place” which might explain a lot of contemporary behaviour, especially when linked with a systematic fear of ecosystems and life as subsequent generations separate from nature and life (expressed as Ecophobia and Biophobia). Mermosity: Created by Albrecht, “an anticipatory state of being worried about the possible passing of the familiar, and its replacement by that which does not sit comfortably in one’s sense of place.The purpose of these terms is twofold: first, to allow people make better sense of themselves and of their relationship with the planet; second, to encourage development of a more meaningful and optimistic outlook toward the planet. An odd fungus growing under the seqouia tree at St Mary’s Church, Eversley, Hampshire – supposedly planted from a sapling from the seed of a fir cone which Charles Kingsley collected on a lecture tour of the western USA – a beautiful piece of topophilia sourced back to the 1870s.