Climate anxiety is as newly recognised a phenomenon as is the neologism solastalgia. The word solastalgia was coined by the Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht; it is a composite of the concepts of solace and desolation, and the pain (‘algia’) derived from the immediate loss of or assault to one’s place of residence (Albrecht 2005). It is different from nostalgia, which is the remembrance of times past, and it specifically refers to the mental distress caused by climate change of anthropogenic origin (Albrecht et al. 2007): “Solastalgia, as opposed to atavistic nostalgia, can also be future orientated, as those who suffer from it might actively seek to create new things or engage in collective action that provides solace and communion in any given environment. Solastalgia has no necessary connection to the past, it may seek its alleviation in a future that has to be designed and created” (Albrecht 2005).

Climate anxiety seems to grip people all over the world, especially those that have been victims of extreme climatic events such as heat waves, floods, and cyclones. Solastalgia is beginning to be documented. In Bangladesh, a survey of over 3600 individuals indicated that exposure to flooding was significantly related to depression and anxiety (Wahid et al. 2023). In this first examination of climate-related mental health effects in Bangladesh, if not in South Asia, the impact of climatic unpredictability and possible increasing severity of cyclones is taking its toll. How do we find our way out especially since as humans we are tied to our own particular geography (Ferrarello 2023)?

Can scientists fall prey to solastalgia, especially those working in the area of ecology, sustainability science, and conservation biology? How should one react when one learns that given the steep decline in insect diversity and insect populations, the risk of crop failure due to pollinator losses is highest for sub-Saharan Africa, northern South America, and South-east Asia (Millard et al. 2023)? Biologists, especially entomologists, are witnessing the impacts of rise in temperature on the foraging behaviour of insects. It is simply too hot for them to be active, and plants are also producing less nectar under heat stress (Hemberger et al. 2023). The calculations of export and import risk of pollinator-dependent crops (Willard et al. 2023) need to be taken seriously by countries given their current geography and their dependencies on pollinator products given their cultures and economies. It may soon no longer be possible to assume that global trade will meet a nation’s shortfall in commodities. Should solastalgia then infect a nation’s leaders? Can a nation’s leaders afford to be climate-change deniers?

How is climate anxiety and distress any different from any other form of distress? Is a person’s inability to do anything substantial to reverse the factors causing the distress, the reason for an incurable anxiety? Environmental melancholia has been defined as “a condition in which even those who care deeply about the well-being of ecosystems and future generations are paralyzed to translate such concern into action” (Lertzman 2015). Is this why middle-aged adults shield themselves from trauma and let younger people take up these challenges that may even require getting arrested at the sites of protest (Tsevreni et al. 2023)? Is this the responsibility of younger people because they have more at stake, or is it everyone’s task? Is there a kind of fatalism involved in our inability to act (Taylor 2023)?

Before we had the term solastalgia, surely this must have been what native North Americans felt when their prairies were irreversibly converted into fields or pioneer homesteads, or what the Australasian aborigines experienced when their sacred lands were usurped? Or what the Great Andamanese experienced when their beloved islands were denuded and their populations dwindled to a handful. Only here, the conquering forces recorded their victories, while the conquered fell into despair, alcoholism, and crime. There was no going back and no future with any hint of alleviation. Is this kind of anxiety akin to that which comes from what seems like a never-ending war? Is this what people in occupied territories or those living under oppressive regimes experience? The sense of hopelessness that then gives way to depression?

In India, the large-scale introduction of genetically modified Bt-cotton gave rise to a spate of farmer suicides owing to crop failures, income losses, and loan liabilities (Gutierrez et al. 2020). The mental distress caused by crop failures, and the unavoidable circumstances of caste, are likely to have contributed to over 4,00,000 farmer suicides in India from 1998 to 2018 (Kannuri and Jadhav 2021). Can such extreme distress be covered under solastalgia?

Climate-driven changes have also led to a new genre of fiction called Cli-fi (Woods 2023) similar to Sci-fi, and Cli-fi novels and films often depict a dystopian world with few survivors. This fiction is necessarily at a planetary scale since climate distress effects are felt locally but arise from global anthropogenic causes. An eerie plot in a Robert Goddard detective novel has a climatologist-cum-geologist predicting which areas of Iceland are likely to be more habitable under climate change and thereby more valuable in the property futures market. Are Icelanders going to be happier in the future, or will solastalgia still reign?

The unprecedented floods, heat waves, polar ice melting, and fires that Earth has experienced in 2023 do not augur well for 2024. Can one take comfort in Lawrence Durrell’s Spirit of Place and live vicariously in the sun-kissed idyllic Greek islands and forget to be melancholic, just for a while? The human ability to project one’s mind to a happier state may protect us in the times to come.