That was a really good article. Thanks. I am sure you caught this in the description of the author: “Foster has never considered starting his own blog.”

To answer your question about whether I consider this blog journalism, I guess I’d say no. I also don’t think of it as a journal or diary. That is, I try to keep the minutiae of my personal life out of it.

Some blogs are journalism—namely, the ones that are timely a provide original reporting.I think Three Roads fails on both of those counts.

It’s funny you should ask. In journalism school, back in 2004, I wrote an article for a school publication on this very subject. You can read it here. Please pardon the dated references and typos.

While I agree with you about not being able to claim innocence, I suspect a lot of people were simply ignorant of the fact that they would be profoundly impacted by climate change on a psychic level. That doesn’t exonerate us—we should have known this would happen—but it leaves room for the idea that we’re not total a-holes.

Honestly, though, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Brain. Not. Working.

Our minds have handled all the changes just fine up til this new fangled climate one so what makes this change so different to get a new word made up for the way we feel about its effects.

My guess, Logan, is that changes of the past century—perhaps two centuries—have had a greater toll than we thought. If anything, we’re finally noticing the psychic pain that’s been with us for years as a result of changes in our environment. Now we have a word to describe it.

For me, solastagia doesn’t apply only to climate change. I think it’s comes with any fundamental change in the landscape, either in a direct anthropogenic way (the building of a strip mall where an open field once was, for example) or in an indirect anthropogenic way (the barely perceptible change in weather patterns as a result of our carbon burning activities).

I consider myself to be a moralistic individual but I have mysteriously justifed my need to drive to the ski hill. Conflicted? Sure. Still going skiing? You betcha. This solastalgia people are getting is from the idea that soon we aren’t going to be able to go skiing or anything else so conveniently. It is not from missing birds and plants cause that’s been happening for a long time. This is a nice way to say that we all just don’t care enough and now we can claim innocence.

Hmmm. I guess I’m not quite so cynical. I don’t think it’s a matter of trying to claim innocence. I think Albrecht’s point is that we don’t quite understand how connected to the land we are. We think such ties are something of the past. But you don’t have to be an ornithologist to get sad when you don’t hear certain birds anymore. You don’t have to be a conservationist to lament the loss of open space in your hometown. We are connected to the land, even if by our actions we hurt the land we love.

We’re all conflicted.

Glenballs, put your pants back on!