Complex Agency in the Great Acceleration:

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-173
Author(s):  
Petra Dolata
Keyword(s):  
Great Acceleration

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the TermAnthropocene

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Morton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Earth’S Crust ◽  
Steam Engine ◽  
Radioactive Materials ◽  
Earth Systems ◽  
Huge Data ◽  
Earth's Crust ◽  
Great Acceleration ◽  
Geological Period

Not a day goes by in the 2010s without some humanities scholars becoming quite exercised about the termAnthropocene. In case we need reminding,Anthropocenenames the geological period starting in the later eighteenth century when, after the invention of the steam engine, humans began to deposit layers of carbon in Earth’s crust. Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer’s term has been current since 2000.1In 1945, there occurred “The Great Acceleration,” a huge data spike in the graph of human involvement in Earth systems. (The title’s Kubrick joke stems from the crustal deposition of radioactive materials since 1945.) Like Marx, Crutzen sees the steam engine as iconic. As this is written, geologists such as Jan Zalasiewicz are convincing the Royal Society of Geologists to make the term official.

scholarly journals Anthropocene and “Development”: Intertwined Trajectories Since the Beginning of The Great Acceleration

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 400-413
Author(s):  
Marina Dantas de Figueiredo ◽  
Fábio Freitas Schilling Marquesan ◽  
José Miguel Imas
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Model ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
The North ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
Global North ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Great Acceleration ◽  
North And South

ABSTRACT Objectives: We aim to propose the thesis that the trajectories of the Anthropocene and the current mainstream understandings of development are intertwined from the beginning. It means that the Anthropocene and the “development” are coetaneous: the implementation of development policies for the so-considered underdeveloped regions started to happen at the same time of what is known as The Great Acceleration of production, consumption and environmental degradation in a global level. Method: In this conceptual paper, we adopt a decolonial critique as an analytical lens and argue that different geopolitical positions may be necessary for approaching the issue of the Anthropocene from epistemological reflections that can include the cultural and political context of the production and reproduction of local knowledge. Results: Our theoretical argumentation sheds light on the role of Global North and South relations in shaping the environmental crisis. Latin America (LA) exemplifies the modus operandi of the intertwinement of the practical effects of development policies and the environmental consequences underlying the Anthropocene, in which natural resources are over-explored to satisfy export-oriented trade, from the South toward the North. LA is not only a propitious context to show the validity of our thesis, but also the source of alternatives to such developmental model. Conclusion: The emphasis on development as a cause of the Anthropocene supports The Great Acceleration thesis. The proposition of the name Developmentocene comes from the thesis that development and Anthropocene are coetaneous, the intertwinement of both resulting in the very definition of the new epoch.

scholarly journals A rewarding experience in many ways: The 3rd World Congress of Environmental History

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
Verena Winiwarter
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Field Trips ◽  
Environmental Cost ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
World Congress ◽  
Environmentally Conscious ◽  
Intergenerational Exchange ◽  
Global North ◽  
Great Acceleration

The 3rd World Congress of Environmental History, held in Florianópolis, Brazil had the theme: “Convergences: The Global South and the Global North in the Era of Great Acceleration”. The short paper gives an overview of the rewards such congresses can bring. It specifically deals with the plenary talks by Robert Billot and Brigitte Baptiste, highlights the role of scholarly co-operation and makes a case for the opportunity offered by such congresses to review the environment of the hosting country, for which the plenary roundtables, the excursions, and field trips and comparative panels are referred to as examples. World congresses might have an environmental cost, but they do provide unique opportunities for scholarly exchange, in terms of themes, methods, conceptual approaches, and sources used. Behaving in an environmentally conscious way but at the same time enabling and fostering international and intergenerational exchange is a challenge that will have to be taken up in the future.

scholarly journals Global trade in the Anthropocene: A review of trends and direction of environmental factor flows during the Great Acceleration

2020 ◽  
pp. 205301962097371
Author(s):  
John Brolin ◽  
Astrid Kander
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Factor ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Environmental Efficiency ◽  
Pollutant Emissions ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Environmental Benefit ◽  
Great Acceleration

Global trade is a neglected topic in debates on the Anthropocene, but plays an implicit role in several suggested definitions of it. Trade’s role in shifting environmental burdens around the globe differed substantially between the Columbian Exchange (1492−1800), the Industrial Revolution (~1800−1950) and the Great Acceleration (post-1950). However, this systematic state-of-the-art review shows that the more than 350 global studies of trade-embedded environmental factors all centre on the Great Acceleration. An underlying concern here is whether environmental factor flows are to the economic and/or environmental benefit of all, a case of the rich exploiting the poor, or merely the inadvertent consequence of differences in environmental efficiency. We point out similarities in the trends and direction of flows between major world regions and between developed and developing countries. Factors such as land, virtual water, HANPP and eutrophying pollutants that are related to the organic economy (or direct biomass flows), primarily flow from regions where population density is low to where it is high, and are only secondarily affected by affluence. Indicators such as energy, airborne pollutant emissions and greenhouse gasses that are related to the mineral economy (fossil fuel, metal and mineral use) tend to flow from developing to developed countries, and are explained either by higher consumption rates or greater environmental efficiency in affluent countries, which has similar consequences for net flows. We weave the shifting trends and directions of flows during the Great Acceleration into a coherent story. Finally, returning to the period before the Great Acceleration, we argue the need for global studies of trade-embedded factor flows before 1950 to test ideas on the character and origins of the Anthropocene, and to accomplish this suggest either geographically extending quantitative long-term national and/or commodity studies, or environmentally extending recently compiled global monetary bilateral trade data for the pre-1950 period.

scholarly journals Multidecadal increase in plastic particles in coastal ocean sediments

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. eaax0587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Brandon ◽  
William Jones ◽  
Mark D. Ohman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Doubling Time ◽  
Coastal Sediments ◽  
Benthic Organisms ◽  
World War ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Santa Barbara Basin ◽  
Exponential Increase ◽  
Great Acceleration ◽  
Deposit Feeding

We analyzed coastal sediments of the Santa Barbara Basin, California, for historical changes in microplastic deposition using a box core that spanned 1834–2009. The sediment was visually sorted for plastic, and a subset was confirmed as plastic polymers via FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) spectroscopy. After correcting for contamination introduced during sample processing, we found an exponential increase in plastic deposition from 1945 to 2009 with a doubling time of 15 years. This increase correlated closely with worldwide plastic production and southern California coastal population increases over the same period. Increased plastic loading in sediments has unknown consequences for deposit-feeding benthic organisms. This increase in plastic deposition in the post–World War II years can be used as a geological proxy for the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene in the sedimentary record.

North Central, South Side

Remainders ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Ronda
Keyword(s):  
Gwendolyn Brooks ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Neighborhood Conditions ◽  
North Central ◽  
South Side ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Lorine Niedecker ◽  
Great Acceleration ◽  
Central South

The opening chapter reads two mid-century poets, Lorine Niedecker and Gwendolyn Brooks, as chroniclers of socioecological transition in the immediate postwar period. While environmental historians have recently turned attention to the suburbs as the key site of inquiry into changing postwar conditions, the chapter emphasizes the rural and urban peripheries as locales that reveal many of the emerging characteristics of the Great Acceleration. Turning first to Lorine Niedecker, the chapter describes her development of a poetics attentive to uneven development, residual forms of life, and ecosystemic degradation in the mixed economy of rural Wisconsin. The second half of the chapter moves from Niedecker’s rural Wisconsin to Brooks’s urban Chicago. Brooks explores the production of space in relation to the forms of environmental racism emerging in South Side housing and neighborhood conditions after 1945.

Introduction

Remainders ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Ronda
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Great Acceleration ◽  
Historical Model ◽  
Cultural Concept

The Introduction lays out the historical framework of the Great Acceleration. Rather than aligning the Great Acceleration with the discourse of the Anthropocene, this introduction argues that the particular historical model of the Great Acceleration is more attentive to the explosive economic growth in this period and its ecological ramifications. Postwar American poetry’s interest in leftovers, residual matter and life, and unredeemable goods makes it a particularly keen chronicler of the larger ecohistorical changes of this era. At the same time, this interest in remainders rather than natural externality becomes a measure of the increasing inaccessibility of the master-concept of nature as an imaginative resource and a cultural concept in this time. It also reveals the changing self-conceptions of the cultural work and status of poetry after modernism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document