Social Science Section 3 - (Resource Guide)

J. R. McNeill

an American scholar and pioneering environmental historian who popularized the idea of the "Great Acceleration"

Eunice Newton Foote

an American scientist and women's rights advocate who recognized in the mid-nineteenth century that changing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could impact the climate

United Nations (UN)

an intergovernmental organization founded in 1945 in the wake of World War II with a continued aim of promoting peace, dignity, equality, and a healthy planet

Paul J. Crutzen

a Dutch neurologist who helped found the IPCC in 1988, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995, and coined the term "Anthropocene" in 2000

Eugene F. Stoermer

a biologist who, along with Paul J. Crutzen, coined the term "Anthropocene"

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

a body of the United Nations (UN) that was formed in 1988 to offer an independent assessment of climate science and mediate between scientists and policymakers

Industrial Revolution

a development starting in the late eighteenth century that expanded manufacturing by using machines

Black Gold

a popular term that references oil, its immense value, and the fact that it, like gold, must be extracted from the earth

Great Acceleration

a term coined by environmental historian J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke that identifies 1950 as a date when, partly due to a rapid growth in the human population, humanity's impact on the natural world rapidly increased, including a steep rise in fossil fuel emissions

Triple Planetary Crisis

the ongoing and looming global risks related to climate change, air pollution, and biodiversity loss