Becoming Landsick: Rethinking Sustainability in an Age of Continuous, Visible, and Irreversible Change

• Author: Robin Kundis Craig
• Pages: 41-62

41

Chapter 4:

Becoming Landsick:

Rethinking Sustainability in

an Age of Continuous, Visible,

and Irreversible Change

Robin Kundis Craig

Most people know what it means to be seasick: When a land-dwelling

human being goes out on the ocean—or out on a lake big enough

to enterta in signicant water movement—the swell, waves, and

constant motion induce nausea and vomiting. Seasickness is one form of the

more general ailment known as motion sickness, a physiological reaction to

the brain’s confusion when the ner vous system’s three pathways for sensing

motion—“the inner ear (sensing motion, acceleration, and gravity), the eyes

(vision), and the deeper tissues of the body surface (proprioceptors)”—pro-

duce uncoordinated signals about what the body is doing.1 In brief—and to

highlight the metaphorical import of seasickness for this chapter—human

beings tend not to react well to unintentional motion and change.

However, human beings are also adaptable. Stay out at sea long enough,

and you develop “sea legs”—that is, an ability to cope with the constant

change and motion that goe s with being on a ship at sail. Moreover, human

beings will often carry their sea legs back on shore with them, causing land-

sickness. La ndsickness is the inverse of traditional motion sickness, where a

human body that has become used to constant motion suddenly goes back to

stable land.2 Most people readjust fairly quickly to being back on la nd, but

in some people landsickness persists as a more-or-less permanent condition,

1. Sy Kraft, What Is Motion Sickness (Travel Sickness)? What Causes Motion Sickness?, M. N T,

Jan. 15, 2010, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/176198.php; see also Charles W. Bryant,

What Is Landsickness?, D F  H (last visited July 9, 2013), http://health.howstu-

works.com/mental-health/neurological-conditions/landsickness.htm.

2. Bryant, supra note 1.

My thanks to the organizers of the Environmental Law Collaborative for including me in

the original discussions regarding the future of sustainability.

42 Rethinking Sustainability

an aiction known as Mal de Debarquement syndrome. Researchers believe

that in patients suering from this syndrome, “the brain may be stuck believ-

ing that t he rocking motion e xperienced at sea is normal a nd that being on

land is disorienting.”3

In this climate change era, we all need to rewire ourselves into a metaphor-

ical Mal de Debarquement syndrome—that is, into a state where we view

constant change as the norm, not a s an aberration to be ignored, avoided,

or resisted. As a more positive formulation, we need to acquire our climate

change sea legs— and, as will be shown below, that means jettisoning main-

stream notions of sustainability. Such popular conceptions of susta inability

assume a relatively stationary world, impeding humans’ ability to deal with

the realities of climate change.

I. Adapting to Climate Change

We have entered the era of climate change adaptation, which is most fun-

damentally about coping with continual, a nd often unpredictable, change.

Adaptation is absolutely necessary bec ause we have passed, denitively, the

point of avoiding climate change impacts.

While there are many greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is the one of great-

est genera l climatic concern, both because of its ubiquity and because it is

the greenhouse gas most signicantly att ributable to anthropogenic sources.

In May 2013, global average concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmo-

sphere exceeded 400 pa rts per million for the rst time in t hree to ve mil-

lion years—that is, since before modern humans inhabited Earth.4 ese

concentrations do not bode well for the planet’s many systems, including the

socioecological systems upon which humans depend.5

Carbon dioxide does eventual ly cycle out of the atmosphere, but the pro-

cess is slow. Ca rbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for “‘a few centu-

ries, plus 25 percent . . . la sts essentially forever,’”6 and “[t]he warming from

our CO2 emissions would last eectively forever, too.”7 As a result, even if

all greenhouse ga s emissions ended tomorrow (which will not be the case),

3. Id.; see also Elizabeth Svoboda, Even on Land, Seasickness Doesn’t Always Go Away, N.Y. T, June

12, 2007.

4. Brian Vastag & Jason Samenow, Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Hit Troubling Milestone, Scientists Say,

W. P, May 10, 2013.

5. For example, “e temperature during that period, known as the Pliocene Epoch, was 5 to 7 degrees

warmer than today, with seas tens of feet higher.” Id.

6. Mason Inman, Carbon Is Forever, N R C C, Nov. 20, 2008 (quoting

oceanographer David Archer).

7. Id.; see also Cornelia Dean, Emissions Cut Won’t Bring Quick Relief, Scientists Say, N.Y. T, Jan. 27,

2009, at A21 (noting that “the eects of carbon dioxide persist”).