Solastalgia
As Climate Change morphs from a theoretical outcome into our everyday real-life experience we will continue to be forced to wrestle with our collective inaction. This will have implications both physically and emotionally for our entire lives.
The lived experience of climate change is hard to conceptualize. As I type this two major storms are forecast to make landfall in quick succession in the gulf of Mexico this week. Hurricane Laura is rapidly gaining strength. It is not known if the double hurricane is in fact a result of climate change but, as predicted over a decade and a half ago, storms have become more frequent and more intense. Just as it is impossible to identify the cigarette that caused the cancer, it is impossible to know the act wich pushed past the tipping point into the resulting climate chaos we now live with.
Likewise, a string of wildfires is concurrently plaguing the American West. In California 560 wildfires are actively burning while four in Colorado burn hundreds of thousands of acres including the Pine Creek Fire which is the largest wildfire in State history.
The impacts of the catastrophic climate events have displaced hundreds of thousands and depending on how the hurricanes make landfall could displace thousands more. We have passed the point of convenient denialism and are slipping toward collective nihilism.
Over 180,000 people in the United States have died from covid-19 and not a single remorseful word has been uttered by those elected to manage such outbreaks. Viruses and pandemics, as suspected, thrive in a warming climate.
Meanwhile, the afternoon light in central Colorado drifts an ominous orange from heavy smoke which has obscured views of iconic ranges that ring our home valley. In places across the state ash rains down like a gentle snow but people carry on the best they can. Shoppers walk the streets wearing masks, their faces covered to protect themselves from the Covid-19 pandemic and also oppressive levels of smoke.
The many nuances of life we took for granted are literally going up in smoke. They ability to hug loved ones, travel, and conduct business face-to-face have changed and there will be a longing for things as they once were.
Many people appear to be in a state of shock and amazement at the state of things.
During the Blitz of the United Kingdom during WWII, Londoners showed a dogged determination to live life as normal as a way to thumb their nose at Hitlers efforts at cracking their resistance. The bombing ended. Hitler lost. The prospect of irreversible ecosystem change will not waver to dogged determination. Extinction as we know it is permanent.
What is left is a departure from life as we have known it and, perhaps, a longing to see it again. Solistalgia is a term coined to describe the existential distress brought on by irreversible and ultimately cataclysmic environmental change.
Just as nostalgia is a longing for memories, solistalgia is the emotional response to change that is pulling us away from what we once knew.
The trauma of a catastrophic event like a hurricane or wildfire reducing your home to ashes may in time trigger a stress response, so too can the collective departure from our past fall into the realm of a life altering trauma.
There is no precedence for a worldwide traumatic event like the one we are facing. Nobody living on this planet is unaffected by changes to our climate and ecosystem that sustains us. Some areas are disproportionately affected while others will remain insulated from the worst affects at least initially.
Grappling with the effects will take generations and transition for those living through it today will take an emotional toll. It needs to be addressed, discussed and raised as we navigate our place in the future. The struggle will be absurd in the same sense that Sisyphus ground uphill each day with no logical escape. We must press on and make changes now that increase our viability in the future or we will become obsolete.
It will be necessary to grieve the loss of the old normal and seek ways to embrace a new reality moving forward. Acknowledge the way forward while honoring the past.