Global Change: The Great Acceleration

The Great Acceleration of social and ecological change began with industrialisation in Europe. Exponential growth since the mid-twentieth century with resulted in a variety of social and ecological changes which show, that the natural resource base of the Earth is overshot. Critical analyses of the acceleration and its consequences began with the “limits-to-growth” discourse in the 1970s, later specified through the planetary boundaries as the load limits of the Earth, in ecological research about the Anthropocene, and social-ecological research about crises of the societal relations with nature. The disastrous consequences of the Great Acceleration require a social-ecological transformation to achieve a sustainable state of society, economy, and ecosystems.