Solastalgia: A New Word For Our Climate Homesickness

‘Solastalgia is a new concept developed to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress’

Photo by Benjamin Behre on Unsplash

“Solastalgia is a new concept developed to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress. As opposed to nostalgia — the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home –solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.”

Overview
1. What happens when words fail us?
2. What is solastalgia?
3. From 'local solastalgia' to 'global solastalgia'
4. The takeaway

1. What happens when words fail us?

Do we have a word in English to describe the intersecting social, ecological, and psychological crises we are experiencing simultaneously?

There seems to be a sense among many of us who are awake to climate truth that 1) there is not only a new kind of…