This is Bird Note.

Glenn Albrecht grew up in a bird lover's paradise in western Australia,

where the calls of Western Rosellas, golden-shildered parrots, and gray fantails,

gave him a rich sense of place.

But when he saw how coal mining displaced communities, polluted the air and water,

and decimated bird populations, Glenn lacked the words to describe his emotions.

The philosopher Wittgenstein once wrote that the limits of my language are the limits of my

world. If that's true, then if you create more language, new language, you actually expand your world.

So Glenn created the concept of solostalgia in 2003 to describe the pain of witnessing

environmental harm where you live. He defines it as the homesickness you have when you're

still at home, and your home is

leaving you.

I want to disrupt business as usual, and the way I'm doing it is with disruptive language.

Glenn imagines a possible future era called the symbia scene, when human activity will once

again be fully interconnected with the ebb and flow of the

rest of nature, and therefore cause no more destruction of life on earth. He says the massive declines

in bird populations are just one sign that we need to expand our imaginations about how we

coexist with all forms of life. Instead of being depressed about the future,

we can have radical anticipation of a future

that we ourselves are creating.

For Bird Note, I'm Nick Byard.