The Weight of Nature
How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains
by Clayton Page Aldern
“When heat takes its place in your brain, it is pushing you out”.
After reading so many books and articles about the climate crisis, I was pleasantly surprised at how fresh and original this was. Written with journalistic flair, it looks into the surprising links between rising temperatures and the behavior of the human brain.
It begins by exploring the question so many experts ask — why we don’t act with sufficient urgency, why climate change is so hard to grasp. I found this part eye-opening. In later chapters, the author turns his attention to how our brains may be affected by our warming world — and while some similar physiological aspects have been described, for example, in the excellent The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, here too he is able to discover totally unexpected effects and grim consequences. In the process, he ventures into so many areas of interest to me: zoonotic diseases, forest fires, animal senses, linguistics.
Aldern neatly sums up my own feelings when he writes that “climate anxiety is real. But the phrase is a misnomer. Anxiety, psychiatrically, suggests irrational fear. There is nothing irrational about worrying about collapse.” All this paints a rather apocalyptic picture, as the author himself admits — but he adds that “if we want a shot at warding off the coming neurological nightmare, we have to walk into this thing with open eyes”. And I agree. Everyone should read this book, it is too late to pretend that we can comfortably ignore what awaits us all. As Aldern writes towards the end, “Recognizing and welcoming our heavy planetary bonds may offer a means of realizing a societal response to the climate crisis — a manner in which we can build the connections that are necessary for the collective action that protest, policymaking, and accountability require. Anchored, steadied by grief, we can act”.
Thanks to the publisher, PENGUIN GROUP Dutton, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
