Solastalgia
This is the word for the distress caused by environmental change. Disasters can be a big part of this. The term “Solastalgia” was first coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2005.
Similar in some ways to Nostalgia — the longing for home or place of comfort, which is no longer there; Solastalgia is “a term created to describe feelings which arise in people when an environment changes so much that it negatively affects an individual’s quality of life. Such changed environments may include drought-stricken areas and open-cut mines.” (Warsini et al., 2014). The same can be said for communities impacted by wildfires, hurricanes, river flooding, and other natural disasters. Climate change can of course have impacts on various environments — and the people who rely on them for their living, sanity, wellness, etc. If you remember walking through pristine woods to get somewhere on a regular basis, and now it’s a housing development, you may be saddened for your loss of “what the good times were” — your sense of Solastalgia.
It is unclear if Solastalgia occurs from human-made disasters (a quick literature review did not find any studies on this set of threat aspects), as much of the definition of Solastalgia is related to missing or degrading natural environmental benefits (peer-reviewed research in this area focuses on natural-looking landscapes, which have been altered by volcanos, and also…
