When Words Fail: Does a Warming World Need a New Vocabulary?

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



When Words Fail: Does a Warming World Need a New Vocabulary?
We often don’t have the words to express our strong emotions about environmental destruction or a changing climate. Meet the man who’s trying to fix that.

by Madeline Ostrander
posted Sep 19, 2011


We are at a loss for words, says Glenn Albrecht. There is nothing in English adequate to describe how overpowering it is to face climate change, or how we might feel about drought across Somalia or Texas, the leveling of mountains for coal mining, or our uncertainty about how flooded or stormy the future may be.

So Albrecht is inventing new words.

Albrecht is an Australian philosopher who has gained some fame for coining the word solastalgia, a term that describes the angst you might feel when the environment around you starts to change, whether because of coal-mining or drought or flooding. It’s an evocative word that has brought Albrecht renown, made the New York Times Magazine, and become the subject of art, music, and street theater in places as far-flung as Slovenia, New Jersey, and Portland, Ore.

Albrecht says our inability to name our emotions helps feed our political inertia on climate change. He is now compiling an entire lexicon to describe our grief, hope, joy, and anxiety about the way the environment is changing around us. The words he creates are based on his research on how we feel about the places we live. His work maps out the rocky emotional landscape we will have to navigate as the planet heats up, suggesting ways we can overcome paralytic fear about climate change and find sources of joy and hope. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/when-words-fail-does-a-warming-world-need-a-new-vocabulary

[ananda]

1. Very apropos, methinks.

I would love to have so many more euterric moments than the ones
of horror and grief that come just about every fucking day over climate
change and ecological sociopathy.

[MisterP]

2. "emotional floodout" for having your self swept away with your possessions

[Nihil]

3. Unrec for pointless vanity piece

(i.e., the content of the OP, not marmar the poster!!)


> We are at a loss for words, says Glenn Albrecht.

You might be but that doesn't mean that everyone is.


> There is nothing in English adequate to describe how overpowering
> it is to face climate change, or how we might feel about drought
> across Somalia or Texas, the leveling of mountains for coal mining,
> or our uncertainty about how flooded or stormy the future may be.

Wrong. There are plenty of adequate words but not enough adequate
writers (or listeners / readers for that matter) and certainly not enough
people willing to actually do something rather than just chatter about
bollocks like this in a magazine.


> So Albrecht is inventing new words.

... and distracting the meat-heads from the actual fucking problem.

Arsehole.

:grr:

[txlibdem]

4. The linked article is a bit wordy

;-)