On Monday, Harvard University Press publishes The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945, by University Professor John McNeill and Dr. Peter Engelke (PhD, 2011), a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Out in paperback, The Great Acceleration examines humanity's booming nonrenewable energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the current age of population growth, increased standards of living, and significant ecological disruption.
"Peter and I aim to clarify the concept of the Anthropocene for historians and at the same time deepen the acquaintance of natural scientists already grappling with the Anthropocene with the human history that created the Anthropocene," McNeill said this week. "We also hope to convince historians of the logic of the term 'The Great Acceleration' as a way to understand modern history. It is a term that has some traction in global environmental change circles, but not yet among historians."
"Peter and I aim to clarify the concept of the Anthropocene for historians and at the same time deepen the acquaintance of natural scientists already grappling with the Anthropocene with the human history that created the Anthropocene," McNeill said this week. "We also hope to convince historians of the logic of the term 'The Great Acceleration' as a way to understand modern history. It is a term that has some traction in global environmental change circles, but not yet among historians."
An excerpt from the introduction:
'Only one in twelve persons now alive can remember anything before 1945. The entire life experience of almost everyone now living has taken place within the eccentric historical moment of the Great Acceleration, during what is certainly the most anomalous and unrepresentative period in the 200,000-year-long history of relations between our species and the biosphere. That should make us all skeptical of expectations that any particular current trends will last for long.'
Harvard University Press and Amazon.
'Only one in twelve persons now alive can remember anything before 1945. The entire life experience of almost everyone now living has taken place within the eccentric historical moment of the Great Acceleration, during what is certainly the most anomalous and unrepresentative period in the 200,000-year-long history of relations between our species and the biosphere. That should make us all skeptical of expectations that any particular current trends will last for long.'
Harvard University Press and Amazon.
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