Great Acceleration

{{short description|Surge in human activity and impact upon the Earth}}

The Great Acceleration is the dramatic, continuous and roughly simultaneous surge across a large range of measures of human activity, first recorded in the mid-20th century and continuing into the early 21st century.{{Cite web |url=https://futureearth.org/2015/01/16/the-great-acceleration/|title=Definition of Great Acceleration |last=|first= |date=January 16, 2015|website=Future Earth|access-date=}}{{Cite journal|last1=Steffen|first1=Will|last2=Broadgate|first2=Wendy|last3=Deutsch|first3=Lisa|last4=Gaffney|first4=Owen|last5=Ludwig|first5=Cornelia|date=April 2015|title=The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration|journal=The Anthropocene Review|language=en|volume=2|issue=1|pages=81–98|doi=10.1177/2053019614564785|issn=2053-0196|hdl=1885/66463|hdl-access=free}}{{cite book |last1=Bruckmeier |first1=Karl |title=The Anthropocene and its Future: The Challenges of Accelerating Social and Ecological Change |date=2024 |publisher=Springer International Publishing |isbn=978-3-031-56649-3 |pages=29–65 |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-56649-3_2#:~:text=Great%20Acceleration%20as%20part%20of%20complex%20processes%20of%20global%20change |language=en |chapter=Global Change: The Great Acceleration}} Within the concept of the proposed epoch of the Anthropocene, these measures are specifically those of humanity's impact on Earth's geology and its ecosystems. Within the Anthropocene epoch, the Great Acceleration can be variously classified as its only age to date, one of its many ages (depending on the epoch's proposed start date), or its defining feature that is thus not an age, as well as other classifications.{{Cite web |url=http://anthropocene.info/great-acceleration.php|title=Definition of Great Acceleration presenting it as a basic feature and cause of the anthropocene|last=|first=|date=|website=|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151009224528/http://anthropocene.info/great-acceleration.php|url-status=usurped|archive-date=October 9, 2015|access-date=}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.igbp.net/globalchange/greatacceleration.4.1b8ae20512db692f2a680001630.html |title=Alternative definition of Great Acceleration|last=|first=|date=|website=|access-date=}}

Environmental historian J. R. McNeill has argued that the Great Acceleration is idiosyncratic of the current age and is set to halt in the near future; that it has never happened before and will never happen again.{{cite book|title=The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945|last1=Mcneill|first1=J. R.|date=2014|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674545038|location=Cambridge|ref=MCNEILL}} However, climate change scientist and chemist Will Steffen's team have found evidence to be inconclusive to either confirm or refute such a claim.

Related to Great Acceleration is the concept of accelerating change. While not explicitly commenting on whether the Great Acceleration as a whole is set to continue into the near future, the common implication is that the particular trend of accelerating progress will not cease until technological singularity is achieved, at which point technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to the Earth and possibly even the universe itself. Therefore, while adherents of the theory of accelerating change do not comment on the short-term fate of the Great Acceleration, they do hold that its eventual fate is continuation, which also contradicts McNeill's conclusions.

In gauging the effects of human activity on Earth's geology, a number of socioeconomic and earth system parameters are utilized, including population, economics, water usage, food production, transportation, technology, greenhouse gases, surface temperature, and natural resource usage.{{Cite journal|last1=Steffen|first1=Will|last2=Crutzen|first2=Paul J.|last3=McNeill|first3=John R.|date=2007|title=The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?|journal=Ambio|volume=36|issue=8|pages=614–621|jstor=25547826|doi=10.1579/0044-7447(2007)36[614:TAAHNO]2.0.CO;2|pmid=18240674|hdl=1885/29029|hdl-access=free}} Since 1950, these trends have been increasing significantly, often at an exponential rate.{{cite web|last1=ANTHROPOCENE|title=Welcome to the Anthropocene|url=http://www.anthropocene.info/great-acceleration.php|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151009224528/http://anthropocene.info/great-acceleration.php|url-status=usurped|archive-date=October 9, 2015|website=Welcome to the Anthropocene|accessdate=March 10, 2018}}