The Long Acceleration: Rethinking the Historical Causes of the Planetary Emergency

What accelerated during the Great Acceleration, by whom, how and why? How can we explain its origins and roots?

We are living through an unprecedented planetary emergency with deep historical roots. Instead of linking the change in the earth system to the Great Acceleration of the global economy after 1950, our Long Acceleration model stresses the multi-dimensional and long-term causes of the ongoing planetary emergency with special attention to the period 1870-1914. While the Anthropocene is usually linked to the development of postwar consumer societies, we root the beginnings of earth system change in the Second Industrial Revolution and the age of high imperialism.

Day 1, Thursday, August 14

9:00–9:15
Welcome and “Rules of the Road” 
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson & Moritz von Brescius

9:15–10:00
Paper 1: Volume Introduction: Fredrik Albritton Jonsson & Moritz von Brescius

10:10–11:00
Paper 2: Growing and Slowing: Human Population and Modern World History, Alison Bashford

11:10–12:00
Paper 3: Coal and Steam, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson

12:00–13:30
Lunch Break

13:30–14:20
Paper 4: Dietary Transition, Chris Otter

14:20–14:40
Coffee Break

14:40–15:25
Paper 5: The Acceleration Track: Building the Infrastructure of Local Overheating in the Levantine Litoral, On Barak

15:30–16:15
Paper 6: Ferdinand’s Inferno: The Suez Canal in the Long Acceleration, Aaron Jakes

16:30-17:15
Paper 7: Climate and Climate Knowledge, Joyce Chaplin

18:30
Conference Dinner

*

Day 2, August 15, 2025

9:00–9:45
Paper 8: Economics/Ideology, Carl Wennerlind

9:45–10:30
Paper 9: Increase and Extinction: Animals in the Long Nineteenth Century, Rebecca Woods

10:30–10:45
Coffee Break

10:45-11:30
Paper 10: The Industrial Plantation, Corey Ross & Moritz von Brescius

11:40-12:30 
Paper 11: Public Health in the Long Acceleration, Emily Webster

12:30–14:00 
Lunch Break

14:00–14:45
Paper 12: Electrification, Elizabeth Chatterjee

14:45–15:30
Paper 13: The Field or the Factory?: Slavery-Based Cotton Emissions, the British Industrial Revolution, and the Long Acceleration, Eric Herschthal

15:30–15:45
Coffee Break

15:45-16:30
Paper 14: The Internal Combustion Engine, Andy Denning

16:30–ca. 17:30
Conference Commentary, Deborah Coen and Dipesh Chakrabarty

18:30
Conference Dinner

*

Day 3, August 16, Saturday

9:00-10:00
Paper 15: African Anthropocene, Gareth Austin

10:10-11:10
Paper 16: Plastics for an alternative view of the Anthropocene, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent

11:20-12:20
Formal Debrief

12:30- 
Concluding Lunch