Trend Great Acceleration of human pressure continuing

Summary

The report describes the steep rise since the Industrial Revolution, and especially after 1950, in socio-economic indicators such as population, real GDP, primary energy, fertilizer consumption, water use and large dams as the Great Acceleration. Earth-system indicators climbed alongside them, including concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, surface temperature, ocean acidification, tropical forest loss and biodiversity decline. These coupled trends are presented as a defining feature of the Anthropocene, in which people reshape the atmosphere, oceans, land, freshwater and biosphere at global scale. A few indicators, such as marine fish capture, domesticated land and stratospheric ozone depletion, are flattening or recovering, but most keep rising sharply. The report sees these pressures as threatening to push Earth out of the relatively stable Holocene state in which civilizations flourished. It therefore stresses that respecting the planetary boundaries is increasingly urgent to protect Earth's resilience.