The Significance of Earth Grief: Understanding Ecological Death and the Path to Rebirth

Since the nature of what I write about most frequently is considered by some to be macabre (an opinion with which I vehemently disagree, of course) I often receive letters from readers or critics who offer complaints about how my writing makes them feel.   There's a broader point to this narrative, but let me address these complaints first:   if what I write upsets you, don't read it.  It's quite simple.   Otherwise, I'd like to address the comments I've received about general feelings of malaise or displacement - mostly by readers here in the West. 

It's true that in the West (aka the United States)  depression is on the rise, and our mental health scores  are frankly quite abysmal.  Of course, this is linked to a great many things: decline in quality of life, overall physical health and the decline thereof for a majority of the population, socioeconomic factors such as poverty and inequity, and much much more.  This isn't an issue of a one-size-fits-all guilty factor:  there are a multitude of elements that weigh in on this, and I want to address only one of them here.  

The overall malaise - or feeling of malcontent, if you will - of the western population may also be attributed to a rise in Earth grief, or grief over our ongoing ecological loss.    I don't have access to international numbers, so my apologies to my international readers here.  It's possible, though, and I suspect it could be proven, that ecological grief is a significant contributing factor to the mental and physical health declines we are likely to see in all nations around the globe. 

Solastalgia - is it real?  Can ecological loss really cause grief?  Yes, it sure can - and we will feel it as intensely as any other species, for we are as irrevocably intertwined with our planet as they.   

Ecological grief is very real, and its effects are very significant for those who suffer it.  But - as with all suffering - there is meaning to be found in its depths, and I believe that if we are to move beyond our current infantile understanding of the importance of cohabitating appropriately with our environment, then we must examine earth grief and what it can do for us. 

To begin with, climate change is very real, but it is not new.   Our planet has a long and dense history of active climate shift(s), and we are but one small part of that.   What really affects us most, however, is not climate shift.  It is climate shift cause by anthropocentric action that causes us such grief. We're killing ourselves, we know it, and it scares us.    The way we have chosen to cohabitate with our planet devastates not only our environs, but we ourselves, and we are like toddlers who are learning to walk: we consistently continue to bump our proverbial heads and toes on the sharp object of climate change, only to dust ourselves off, get up and do it all over again.  Is there a way to break through this? Can anything be done to stop this?

We are accustomed to living in a yes world.   Want to have goods and services delivered instantly to your door?  Yes, you can do that! Want to access healthcare via your smartphone? Sure, you can do that too! The immediacy with which we are able to acquire goods and servies in the modern era has clouded our ability to understand timelines of any significance, and anthropogenic climate change must be looked at through the lens of history, not of future predictions.  There's only one problem with this though:  to see it through the lens of history, this means we will have had to suffer through it and learn about it on the other side.  We're not there yet, and none of us reading this will be.  So we continue to rage against our legislators and protest and decry large corporations for their wasteful policies, believing that we can protest or boycott enough to move the needle in the direction we want. The problem with this is that nothing really gets done, and we all just keep talking about it.  Activism has its place, but the reality is that the activism that needs most practicing just now doesn't involve legislators or regulators, it doesn't involve academics or politicians, and it doesn't involve corporations.  

Who does it involve?  You. Me. Everyone.  

Legislation will not serve us now.  Politicians are known for their devotion to the parties that write the largest checks.  Environmentalism and greenwashing may be big business, and money may change hands, but other concerns always take precedence.  There is no way to legislate ourselves out of this one, I'm afraid. 

Legislation won't stop climate shift.  Our climate has little to do with manmade laws or regulations. 
But we've survived climate upheavals before. We will again. 

The response we must allow our grief to frame within us should be a grassroots response: the change must happen at the deepest, most fundamental level of ourselves.   If we want to see any significant change, it has to start where we live:  how we go about our daily lives, and what we do every day.  Climate shift will still happen; its a part of life on this planet.  But we have made it through climate shifts before, and came out just fine, and we can do it again. But while the Greta Thunbergs of the world are hopping on Instagram to post photos of their latest protests, we continue to drive ecological loss by sheer virtue of the fact that things like Instagram even exist.  The action we must take will tax us all:  we must learn to live without fossil fuels altogether.  We must learn to live without social media, petroleum fuels and coal-based energy,  and we must reimagine our personal definitions of comfort.  These are all of the musts that we need to learn (or gain) from our ecological grief. 

But these are not the things we will do.  And this is important.  The grief is telling us we must make significant changes.  But change - in any form - is challenging at best.    Human resistance to change is very pronounced, but there is probably an argument to be made that every species resists in its own way.  However, the successful ones are those that adapt to the changes, even when they find it difficult.  Our grief over ecological loss is real, and it affects us: it is supposed to.   But we are not able to make the sweeping changes it would require of us.  Instead, we must each make small adaptations now.   And then, we must teach those adaptations to those who come after us, and help them find their own.   This is a long game; nothing we do right now today will make enormous impact.  Beceause the movement that is needed is like turning the Titanic - it takes enormous amounts of information being passed from one season to another - in teachings, traditions, myths and more - to generate this type of change.  

So my friends, ecological grief - solastalgia if you need a label - is very real. And its purpose is to lead us in a direction where we can regain our forgotten connect with our planet.  In doing so, we will begin - ever so slightly, and not through protests and legislation, but through connection and communal learning - do move the proverbial needle. 

And it will be the right direction: the direction that honors planet and people together as one entity, that does not exploit one for the gain of the other, and that does not exclude any living thing. This is the path to rebirth, and it necessarily must come to us through the darkness of our grief over the loss of the living Earth.   This is our time, and it is our burden to carry.  It did not begin with us, but we can be the beginning of its end.