Abstract
Abstract. Economic growth is inadvertently connected with human impacts on the environment. The currently accepted interpretation is that the intensity of human activities and impacts accelerated dramatically in the 1950s or more broadly in the second half of the 21st century. These claims are not based or a rigorous analysis of data but on impressions. The important question for human future is whether these claims are true. Distributions describing time dependence of human activities and impacts have now been mathematically analysed. Conclusions can be summarised as follows. (1) The intensity of human activities and impacts decelerated in the 1950s or more broadly in the second half of the 21st century. (2) Distributions describing time dependence of human activities and impacts cannot be used to determine the beginning of the Anthropocene because there are no intensification landmarks. (3) Mathematical analysis suggests a new interpretation of the concept of the Anthropocene. Human activities and impacts did not emerge with high intensity at any specific time. They evolved gradually over a long time.
Keywords. The Anthropocene, Human activities and impacts, Deceleration, Sustainable future.
JEL. A12, C02, C12, F01, Y80.References
ABC, (2016). The Anthropocene: a new age of humans. [Retrieved from].
Aristotle, (2012). On the Heavens. New York: Start Publishing LLC.
Biraben, J-N. (1980). An Essay Concerning Mankind's Evolution. Population, Selected Papers, December.
Birdsell, J.B. (1972). Human Evolution: An Introduction to the New Physical Anthropology. Chicago: Rand Mc Nelly.
Clark, C. (1968). Population Growth and Land Use. New York, NY: St Martin's Press.
Cook, R.C. (1960). World Population Growth. Law and Contemporary Problems, 25(3), 379-388. doi. 10.2307/1190745
Crutzen, P.J., & Stoermer, E.F. (2000). "The 'Anthropocene'". Global Change Newsletter, 41, 17-18
Deevey, E.S.Jr (1960). The human population. Scientific American, 203(9), 195-204.
Durand, J.D. (1974). Historical Estimates of World Population: An Evaluation. Analytical and Technical Reports, Number 10. University of Pennsylvania, Population Center.
EPI (2013). Carbon Emissions. [Retrieved from].
Floud, D., & McCloskey, D.N. (1994). The Economic History of Britain since 1700. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gallant, R.A. (1990). The Peopling of Planet Earth: Human Growth through the Ages. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Hassan, F.A. (2002). Population dynamics. In G. Barker (Ed), Companion Encyclopedia of Archaeology. (pp.672-713), London: Routledge.
Haub, C. (1995). How many people have ever lived on Earth? Population Today, February.
Hibbard, K.A., Crutzen, P.J., Lambin, E.F., Liverman, D., Mantua, N.J., McNeill, J.R., Messerli, B., & Steffen, W. (2007). Decadal interactions of humans and the environment. In: R. Costanza, L. Graumlich, & W. Steffen, (Eds). Integrated History and Future of People on Earth, Dahlem Workshop Report, 96, 341-375.
Lenton, T.M., Held, H., Kiegler, E., Hall, J.W., Lucht, W., Rahmstorf, S., & Schellnhuber H.J. (2008), Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 105, 1786-1793. doi. 10.1073/pnas.0705414105
Livi-Bacci, M. (2007). A Concise History of World Population (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Ludwig, C, (2014). The Great Acceleration Data. [Retrieved from].
Maddison, A. (2010). Historical Statistics of the World Economy: 1-2008 AD. [Retrieved from].
Malthus, T. R. (1798). An Essay on the Principle of Population. London: J. Johnson.
Manning, S. (2008). Year-by-Year World Population Estimates: 10,000 B.C. to 2007 A.D. [Retrieved from]. and references therein.
McEvedy, C. & Jones, R. (1978). Atlas of World Population History. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd.
Nielsen, R. (2006). The Green Handbook: Seven trends shaping the future of our planet. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Nielsen, R. W. (2015). The Insecure Future of the World Economic Growth. Journal of Economic and Social Thought, 2(4), 242-255.
Nielsen, R. W. (2016a). Mathematical analysis of the historical economic growth with a search for takeoffs from stagnation to growth. Journal of Economic Library, 3(1), 1-23.
Nielsen, R. W. (2016b). Growth of the world population in the past 12,000 years and its link to the economic growth. Journal of Economics Bibliography, 3(1), 1-12.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016c). Mathematical analysis of the historical income per capita distributions. Economic Review, 3(2), 300-319.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016d). Industrial revolution did not boost the economic growth or the growth of population even in the United Kingdom. Journal of Economic Bibliography, 3(4), 434-446.
Nielsen, R.W. (2017a). Economic growth and the growth of human population in the past 2,000,000 years. Journal of Economic Bibliography, 4(2), 128-149.
Nielsen, R.W. (2017b). Application of differential equations in projecting growth trajectories. Journal of Economic Bibliography, 4(3), 203-221.
Nielsen, R.W. (2017c). Puzzling features of income per capita explained. Journal of Economics Bibliography. 4(1), 10-24.
Steffen, W. (2017). Private communication.
Steffen, W. (2018). Private communication.
Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O., & Ludwig, C. (2015). The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, 2(1) 81-98. doi. 10.1177/2053019614564785
Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P., & McNeill, J. (2011). The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 369, 842–867.
Steffen, W., Leinfelder, R., Zalasiewicz. J., Waters, C.N., Williams, M., Summerhayes, C., … Schellnhuber, H.J. (2016). Earth’s Future, 4, 324–345. doi. 10.1002/2016EF000379
Steffen, W, Sanderson. A., Tyson, P.D., Jager, J., Matson, P.A., Moore III, B., … Wasson, R.J. (2004). Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure. The IGBP Book Series. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag.
Taeuber, C., & Taeuber, I.B. (1949). World population trends. Journal of Farm Economics, 31(1), 241.
Thomlinson, R. (1975). Demographic Problems, Controversy Over Population Control (2nd ed.). Encino, Ca.: Dickenson Pub.
Trager, J. (1994). The People's Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.
United Nations, (1973). The Determinants and Consequences of Population Trends, Population Studies, No. 50. p.10.
United Nations, (1999). The World at Six Billion, [Retrieved from].
United Nations, (2013). World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, DVD Edition. Washington DC: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, [Retrieved from].
United Nations, (2015). World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision. New York: United Nations. [Retrieved from].
US Census Bureau, (2017). International Data Base. [Retrieved from].
Ward, J.D., Sutton, P.C., Werner, A.D., Costanza, R., Mohr, S.H., & Simmons, C.T. (2016). Is decoupling GDP growth from environmental impact possible?, PLoS ONE 11(10), e0164733. doi. 10.1371/journal.pone.0164733
Waters, C.N., Zalasiewicz, J., Summerhayes, C., Barnosky, A.D., Poirier, C., Gałuszka, A., … Wolfe, A.P. (2016). The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene, Science, 351(6269), 137, aad2622-1-10. doi. 10.1126/science.aad262
World Bank, (2017). World Development Indicators. [Retrieved from].
Zalasiewicz, J, Crutzen, P.J., & Steffen, W. (2012). The Anthropocene. In: F.M. Gradstein, J. Ogg, M. Schmitz, & G.M. Ogg (Eds) A Geological Time Scale 2012. (pp.1033-1040), Amsterdam: Elsevier.