Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

As climate change and development pressures overwhelm the environment, our emotional relationships with Earth are also in crisis. Pessimism and distress are overwhelming people the world over. In this maelstrom of emotion, solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home, has become, writes Glenn A. Albrecht, one of the defining emotions of the twenty-first century.

Earth Emotions examines our positive and negative Earth emotions. It explains the author's concept of solastalgia and other well-known eco-emotions such as biophilia and topophilia. Albrecht introduces us to the many new words needed to describe the full range of our emotional responses to the emergent state of the world. We need this creation of a hopeful vocabulary of positive emotions, argues Albrecht, so that we can extract ourselves out of environmental desolation and reignite our millennia-old biophilia--love of life--for our home planet. To do so, he proposes a dramatic change from the current human-dominated Anthropocene era to one that will be founded, materially, ethically, politically, and spiritually on the revolution in thinking being delivered by contemporary symbiotic science. Albrecht names this period the Symbiocene.

With the current and coming generations, "Generation Symbiocene," Albrecht sees reason for optimism. The battle between the forces of destruction and the forces of creation will be won by Generation Symbiocene, and Earth Emotions presents an ethical and emotional odyssey for that victory.

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Whether the concern is loss of biodiversity, worsening storm systems, or how to live more ecologically friendly lives, the reality of human-induced climate change has sparked intense pessimism and distress. For Albrecht (environmental philosophy, School of Geosciences, Univ. of Sydney, Australia) the issue is not only the sheer magnitude of these environmental problems, but also the lack of useful conceptual tools to help people understand and confront those problems. In Earth Emotions, Albrecht seeks to provide a new lexicon of emotional terms. The purpose of these terms is twofold: first, to allow people make better sense of themselves and of their relationship with the planet; second, to encourage development of a more meaningful and optimistic outlook toward the planet. For Albrecht, climate change is the byproduct of the Anthropocene era--an era defined by lack of regard for the health of the planet. What is needed, then, is to develop a sense of "biophilia" (love of life) toward the planet. This love is not a new phenomenon, according to Albrecht; rather, it is a feeling that has been lost in recent generations. The revitalization of biophilia, for Albrecht, is an important step toward overcoming the doom and defeatism now pervading discussion of climate change. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; graduate students. --Jordan Liz, San Jose State University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Glenn A. Albrecht is an Australian environmental philosopher. He established the now widely used and accepted concept of solastalgia, or the lived experience of negative environmental change. He retired from Murdoch University in 2014 as a Professor of Sustainability, and he is now an Honorary Associate in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney.