This lecture will review two concepts that now feature prominently in environmental histories of the modern world and in global change science: The Great Acceleration and the Anthropocene. It will present evidence, drawn mainly from collaborations in the Anthropocene Working Group, for the view that both the Great Acceleration and the Anthropocene began around 1950; that the Great Acceleration has begun to slow; but that the Anthropocene is set to last for many millennia yet to come.
J.R. McNeill, Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University, has authored or edited more than 20 books, including Something New Under the Sun, listed by the London Times among the 10 best science books ever written (despite being a history book); and Mosquito Empires, which won the Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association; and most recently The Webs of Humankind (2 vols.). He is a former president of both the American Society for Environmental History and the American Historical Association, an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Europaea, and a member of the Académie Royale du Maroc. In 2018 he received the Heineken Award for History from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
