Wild Ones #21: Environmental Communication Digest
Solastalgia + Story roots and consequences + Ecolinguistics + Collaborative Ecologies + Tales of Two Planets + Size Isn’t the Best Way to Talk About Fires + more...
Cover Image: “Great Indian Fruit Bat” ca. 1777–82. Painting attributed to Bhawani Das. Located at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in ecolinguistics and ecocultural communication. If you’re new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
Environmental Keyword 🔆
‘Solastalgia’: the distress caused by environmental change. I’ve see this word popping up more often in media on environmental affairs over the past couple months. I thought it might be worth exploring how writers, journalists and researchers are using the term to talk about environmental issues. Here’s some of what I’ve found:
“Solastalgia is a portmanteau of the words “solace” and “nostalgia” coined by the Australian transdisciplinary environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht.” (Artists and Climate Change).
“Solastalgia is a new concept developed to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress. As opposed to nostalgia – the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home –solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.”
Solastalgia or eco-anxiety?: “A distinction can be made between solastalgia linked to mourning what is already lost, and eco-anxiety linked to what may happen (associated with "pre-traumatic stress", in reference to post-traumatic stress).”
Read more on its origin - The age of solastalgia by Glenn Albrecht: “Solastalgia, simply put, is “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”.
Solastalgia': Arctic inhabitants overwhelmed by new form of climate grief (in the Guardian).
If you’re interested in why I think environmental keywords will be important tools in helping us tell new stories about environmental problems and their solutions – improving stories we already tell, but also helping us tell the stories that go untold – I’ve written more about this idea here in a short piece: The Case for Environmental Keywords.
Tools & Opportunities 🔭
Call for Proposals for Early-Career Science Journalism Fellowship (Applications due Oct 25)
The Stories We Live By: A free online course in ecolinguistics
Exploring Nature Writing: Examples and Tips for Writing About the Wild
News & Events 📰
Communicating for food sustainability mini-conference (Nov 12-13)
The Fire Deficit: Who is responsible for the West’s wildfires?
Climate Social Science Network Launched with Hub at Brown University
With the world on fire, climate fiction no longer looks like fantasy
Research 📚
Collaborative Ecologies: Anthropologies of (and for) Survival in the More-Than-Human City
Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By
Communicating a “New” Environmental Vernacular: A Sense of Relations-in-Place
Muted by a Crisis? COVID-19 and the Long-Term Evolution of Climate Change Newspaper Coverage
Climate change communicators’ carbon footprints affect their audience’s policy support
Ideas 💡
Journalism in the Time of Crisis: an interview with science journalist Ed Yong
'Solastalgia': Arctic inhabitants overwhelmed by new form of climate grief
Cold Hard Cash for Your Greenhouse Gas: New episode on How to Save a Planet (podcast)
It’s time to own up to the racism and violence embedded in the names of parks and public lands (from the Wilderness Society)
Picking Up the Pieces: My Search and Rescue Mission for Fallen Songbirds
Blessings: “David Whyte’s “Blessing” poems are interpreted through a visual journey across the Irish landscape in this short film by Emmy-winning filmmaker Andrew Hinton.”
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this useful, I'd love to hear from you, leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest:)