This is a deeply philosophical book about the changing emotional connections humans make with the lands upon which they live. It is also suggested that we have a genetic connection to the natural world built up through generations. 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’. Philosopher Glenn Albrecht, in writing Earth Emotions, is creating a language that ties together humanity and our surrounding environment, both in the positive and negative.

As a fellow old hippy, I want peaceful change as well … but with the global ascendancy of the militaristic and violent Right, peace seems a long way off. This book has to be one of the weirdest books I have read in a long time, and the weirdest book I have read and enjoyed in even longer.With the current and coming generations, "Generation Symbiocene," Albrecht sees reason for optimism. Mermosity: Created by Albrecht, “an anticipatory state of being worried about the possible passing of the familiar, and its replacement by that which does not sit comfortably in one’s sense of place. We need this creation of a hopeful vocabulary of positive emotions, argues Albrecht, so that we can extract ourselves out of environmental desolation and reignite our millennia-old biophilia—love of life—for our home planet.

It begins in the South West of Western Australia for the first two decades of his life, before switching to Newcastle in New South Wales, and in particular, the Hunter Valley. Yateley Common – definitely part of my sumbiography – and much of it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. As climate change and development pressures overwhelm the environment, our emotional relationships with Earth are also in crisis.

I found the new terms fascinating and intriguing and after reading the book I still see them the same way. It does touch on wider concepts associated with ‘ Gaia’ Theory as formulated by James Lovelock and co-developed by Lynn Margulis in the 1970s (viewing the world and all the organisms in it as a single, self-regulating complex system); and more broadly, more diverse yearnings for some kind of secular spirituality, which might help bring about the symbiotic, more collaborative state of play Albrecht outlines.

Starting with a recently defined negative earth emotion, 'solastalgia', the reader is taken on a psycho-terratic (psyche-earth) journey through all of the earth emotions and feelings in use in the public and academic literature. 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. He shines a light on Potawatomi; a Native American language in which not only humans, animals and plants are alive, but most objects we consider inanimate – like mountains, boulders, winds and fire too.What had been a fairly clear and compelling statement about symbiotic life (with more neologisms than necessary or helpful) unravels into a mess. e. separating human cultures and all the xenophobia that comes with that) nor do we get a convincing argument as to how and why we can block such implications. It explains the author's concept of solastalgia and other well-known eco-emotions such as biophilia and topophilia. We have taken words for granted, abused their use, and in many cases, they have become meaningless, yet we have a growing number of feelings, or circumstances connected with our relationship with the world around us for which it is difficult to find words which do them justice.