Nostalgia in the 21st Century: A New Sadness

A new kind of sadness is reported from Australia (via Wired).

Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in
a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying
off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are
dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating.

But what really intrigues Glenn Albrecht — a philosopher by training — is how his fellow Australians are reacting.

They’re getting sad.

In interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, scores of
Australians described their deep, wrenching sense of loss as they watch
the landscape around them change. Familiar plants don’t grow any more.
Gardens won’t take. Birds are gone. "They no longer feel like they know
the place they’ve lived for decades," he says.

Albrecht believes that this is a new type of sadness.
People are feeling displaced. They’re suffering symptoms eerily similar
to those of indigenous populations that are forcibly removed from their
traditional homelands. But nobody is being relocated; they haven’t
moved anywhere. It’s just that the familiar markers of their area, the
physical and sensory signals that define home, are vanishing. Their environment is moving away from them, and they miss it terribly.

This can’t help but remind me of how James Hansen described what is going to happen to a great number of our fellow mortals in this century.

The species most at risk are those in polar climates and the
biologically diverse slopes of alpine regions. Polar animals, in
effect, will be pushed off the planet. Alpine species will be pushed
toward higher altitudes, and toward smaller, rockier areas with thinner
air; thus, in effect, they will also be pushed off the planet. A few
such species, such as polar bears, no doubt will be "rescued" by human
beings, but survival in zoos or managed animal reserves will be small
consolation to bears or nature lovers.

Solstalgia (comfort + pain) is the word Glenn Albrecht has coined for this syndrome. I’m not sure about the coined word, but believe Albrecht is right about the psychology. I even suspect that part of the rage expressed on the far-right at global warming has its roots in fear. Certainly, the concept certainly deserves our attention. In California, I would expect that people will put enormous effort into saving the beings around them most threatened by global warming — such as redwood trees, for example.

(h/t: Andrew Sullivan)