Solastalgia: Climatic Anxiety—An Emotional Geography to Find Our Way Out

Abstract

This paper will discuss the notion of solastalgia or climatic anxiety (Albrecht et al., 2007; Galea et al., 2005) as a form of anxiety connected to traumatic environmental changes that generate an emotional blockage between individuals, their environment (Cloke et al., 2004) and their place (Nancy, 1993). I will use a phenomenological approach to explain the way in which emotions shape our constitution of reality (Husserl, 1970; Sartre, 1983, 1993, 1996; Seamon and Sowers, 2009; Shaw and Ward, 2009). The article’s overall goal is to describe the relationship between environment and “climatic” emotions to understand what we can do to improve our well-being. I believe that scientistic and reductionistic ways of looking at climatic anxiety do not consider this complex dynamic and fail to propose actual solutions for the well-being of both the environment and the individuals.