What Does Climate Change Do to Our Heads? By Sanjay Khanna
A small yet growing body of evidence suggests that how people think and feel is being influenced strongly by ecosystem transformation related to climate change and industry-related displacement from the land. These powerful stressors are occurring more frequently around the world.
A case in point: When researchers from the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at the University of Newcastle in Australia conducted interviews in drought-affected communities in New South Wales in 2005, the responses suggested some of their subjects may have been suffering from a recently described psychological condition called solastalgia (pronounced so-la-stal-juh).
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007906.html
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4 comments:
Hi, Danny:
Feel free to set up a time to call me to discuss "solastalgia."
I held the world's first multidisciplinary conference on the psychosocial
impacts of climate change in October 2009 (just before COP 15) and invited
Dr. Albrecht to speak at the event (http://resilientpeople.org).
I am founding an NGO to deal with this topic entirely as I'd predicted
mental health impacts of climate change as part of forecasting work I'd done
in the private sector in 2004. I began talking about this time as "a brand
new age of anxiety" with economic acceleration running into hard ecological
limits, provoking more mental illness and social distress. Albrecht's work
ended up providing the first Western evidence of the ecological and climatic
contribution to that equation.
In particular, am looking at how to communicate climate change in such a way
that fully acknowledges the reality of what's unfolding, without provoking
unmanageable despair, and leading to constructive action.
With best regards,
Sanjay
________________________________
Sanjay Khanna,
Writer and climate-change journalist
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sanjay-khanna
Hi Dan , they will suffer from solastalgia as they experience the
(hopefully) gradual desolation of their home environments and
eco-nostalgia for their old homes once they are living in polar cities.
Once something has completely gone you can only have nostalgia for it.
My Blog at http://healthearth.blogspot.com/
Has more material on solastalgia within it.
In Australia we will have to think about underground desert
cities/houses ... much like at Coober Pedy, the opal town:
http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/coober-pedy-underground-
homes.html
Regards,
Glenn.
Hi Dan , they will suffer from solastalgia as they experience the
(hopefully) gradual desolation of their home environments and
eco-nostalgia for their old homes once they are living in polar cities.
Once something has completely gone you can only have nostalgia for it.
My Blog at http://healthearth.blogspot.com/
Has more material on solastalgia within it.
In Australia we will have to think about underground desert
cities/houses ... much like at Coober Pedy, the opal town:
http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/coober-pedy-underground-
homes.html
Regards,
Glenn.
Daniel Smith (a freelance writer) has
interviewed Dr Albrect in Perth for a NY Times Magazine story on solastalgia that (maybe)
will be published soon.
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