A Currency for the Anthropocene: Part 2
The 3 A’s: Acceleration — Armageddon — Anthropocene
We live in the age of the great Acceleration, ecological Armageddon and the Anthropocene.
The Great Acceleration, the time period from 1950 onwards (by WIlliam Steffen) illustrates a number of socio economic trends — population, growth, urbanization, energy use, water consumption, fertilizer consumption, transport. All have been and are still accelerating upwards. The same applies to the indicators from “earth system trends”: carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, methane emissions, marine acidifcation, loss of tropical forests and terrestrial biosphere degradation. All of these trends are accelerating in a negative direction (the only exception is stratospheric ozone).
This acceleration is causing the “ecological Armageddon”. Based on data collected by dozens of amateur entomologists in 63 nature reserves across Germany, a team of scientists concluded that the flying insect population had dropped by a staggering 76% over a 27-year period. At the same time, other studies began to highlight dramatic plunges across Europe in the populations of individual species of bugs, bees, and…
