The Great Acceleration

What hockey sticks have to do with the Anthropocene

One way to visualize our changed human circumstances in the Anthropocene era is to view a range of “hockey stick” shaped graphs that measure planetary indicators from human population growth, to energy use, to economic growth, to land, water and resource use, to urbanization and the rise of mass culture, to the crash of biodiversity.

It’s not just about climate.

Most graphs show continuing slow growth starting in 1750 with a rapid acceleration around 1950.

Future Earth has an explainer page dedicated to this Great Acceleration, and an illuminating slide show covering 24 indicators that map the dramatic speed-ups in human impact on the planet. The dataset is a bit dated (ends 2010), and some indicators may currently be leveling off, but there is no denying the massive, recent-historical planetary change happening around us.

It’s important to keep in mind that because of our limited lifespans (who remembers what life was like before 1950?); and because we can’t see the earth as a whole directly through our senses — we can only peruse graphical data like these — we simply aren’t able to pay attention in the way we should.

Note as you go through the slide show (at Future Earth), the OECD countries include 38 highly developed major world economies, and BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

According to the report write-up,

When Paul Crutzen first proposed the idea of the Anthropocene, he suggested it probably began as the Industrial Revolution kicked off around 1800. He changed his mind recently, saying the 1950s is a more likely candidate. This analysis offers evidence from an Earth system perspective that the beginning of the Great Acceleration marks the start date of the Anthropocene.

There is far too much quibbling about exactly when the Anthropocene is supposed to have begun: with the origin of the Homo genus (or our particular species), with the rise of agriculture, with the rise of global trade, with the industrial era, or even more recently with the Great Acceleration in the 1950’s.

Each of these developments played a role in getting us to where we are today.

The point is: here we are.