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13 - Growth beyond Limits: 1945 to Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

John L. Brooke
John L. Brooke
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Summary

The arc of history since the end of the Second World War constitutes a fundamental new departure in the human condition. Building on the global reach of the war itself, the technologies of the Second Industrial Revolution suddenly penetrated every corner of the earth. The result was massive and virtually instantaneous. Populations mushroomed. And if economies have not been adequate to supply their aspirations, the energy mobilized to supply their needs is now literally transforming the earth system. The Anthropocene has arrived.

Underpopulation, not overpopulation, threatened ancient and medieval agrarian societies. When populations grew during climatic optimums, they generally managed to achieve incremental improvements to agricultural productivity. But life was not pleasant. A pervasive hierarchy – and poverty – shaped the human condition. A peasant family in the late Middle Ages, on average, had a standard of living not unlike that of a peasant family in the Bronze Age, and probably the late Neolithic. Average life expectancy at birth ranged from the low twenties to the mid-thirties at best.

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Chapter
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Climate Change and the Course of Global History
A Rough Journey
 , pp. 529 - 558
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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