The book culminates in the affirmation of positive emotional relationships to the Earth for current and future generations. In Earth Emotions, Glenn Albrecht, explores the need for new more suitable terms for new feelings, new sensations in our world of upheaval, forced migration, forced displacement and changes to and within our familiar physical, cultural and emotional environment in which, he argues, we are in symbiosis. Psychoterratic’ is a term coined by Albrecht relating to states of our positive and negative wellbeing linked directly to the Earth and the environment. Yet our senses open and our smiles re-emerge as we recognize that such destruction can be the catalyst for the evolution of human consciousness.

Another — "Environmental generational amnesia" describes how "each generation knows less about their bioregion. Meteoranxiety: Created by Albrecht, this term is one that was particularly apposite prior to the pandemic, and it will continue to be so.The most obvious, and strongest interest is in the lexicon itself, and how it interacts with my own pre-existing interest in issues to do with ‘place’ (a bastardised word if ever there was one in modern public policy-making); ‘the particular’ (the detail, the unique, the small things which seem to disappear each day with ever increasing homogeneity demanded by the dominant economic model); as well as with the environment more generally, and with local history, and how all manner of public policy splices through all of these at various levels. Men, women and all other genders can use their ‘Green Muscle’ in non-violent ways to support the movement into the Symbiocene, especially where hostile opposition is already a serious consideration. And, unlike so many scientists, he does not describe those roads only with numbers, but with a new language of emotions — those now emerging from the tragedy and the possibility of the Earth.

Personally, I feel it is less strong in helping to advance practical strategies for reaching that better world – it has to be read in tandem with other work on seeking to understand power and economics. A world that is upset by the trauma of climate change and environmental crises, but also a world optimistic.It is “the anxiety that is felt in the face of the threat of the frequency and severity of extreme weather events”, which for the most part, are due to climate change.

Just as a botonist before newly discovered plants, Albrecht needs more suitable, more specific lexicon to the familiar generic ones. There are two trees at the back of my neighbour’s garden that talk to me – and have done for almost 45 years. as obsolete in light of our new, enlightened understanding and knowledge of the above mentioned changes and situations. Symbiocene’ is characterised in terms of social organisation ‘by human intelligence that replicates the symbiotic and mutually reinforcing life-reproducing forms and processes found in living systems…. In terms of helping us better use language to understand how we feel about, and explore and explain our relationship with our planet and the places we live in and shape, and to equip us to make better connections, Glenn A.There is a worry that new generations may mature into adults that have fear at the appearance of unexpectedness, so they more likely spend their time in climate controlled boxes and grow their ignorance to "otherness". Biophilia: an older term, first deployed by Eric Fromm in 1964, to mean a love of life, and a reverence for everything in humanity that enhances life and growth in nature, establishing it as an ethical good. Terrafuric: Coined by Albrecht, “the extreme anger unleashed within those who can clearly see the self-destructive tendencies in the current forms of industrial-technological society and feel they must protest and act to change its direction. The pain or distress caused by the loss or lack or solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. The final chapter, which reads like a science fiction imagining of a utopia, is uplifting and heartwarming, and presents a vision of a positive future that is rarely found in literature on the devastating effects of the Anthropocene.

I’ve long described such feelings in an almost physical sense – almost like I’m subject to a long-standing, low-level dose of electrical current – no ‘shock’, just mild ‘unease’. As a relentlessly optimistic manifesto for living in the future, this book addresses the emotional, cultural, ethical, political, spiritual and practical aspects of positive earth emotions and the defeat of those that are destructive of people and the planet. I take on board everything you say about impatience for change (I suffer the same affliction to such an extent that I insisted my sister give her daughter the middle name ‘Patience’ to try to do something about it, after discovering it was the name of one of my great, great, great grandmothers). Part of Macfarlane’s book which most captivated me was where he looks at language, and the challenge to get beyond the literal – for example, the ‘language of plants’, rather than just the language that is used to speak ‘of plants’.The main criticism for this book, which is primarily a eco-psychology overview of climate change, is it doesn't empower the readers to go in the real world and create a wave of positive eco-psychology around us. Albrecht introduces us to the many new words needed to describe the full range of our emotional responses to the emergent state of the world. How do we possibly process the overwhelming information about climate change, and how it will impact on the places we know?