John Robert McNeill

“In the half century after 1950, the global economy grew sixfold. Annual economic growth averaged 3.9 percent per year, far outstripping the estimated historical averages for the industrial age up to that point (1820–1950) of 1.6 percent per year and for the “early modern,” post-Columbian world (1500–1820) of 0.3 percent per year”
― John Robert McNeill, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945

“The rapid global economic growth from the 1950s required ever-increasing quantities of raw materials and foodstuffs—metals, oil, coal, timber, fish, meat, and agricultural commodities of all types. Heightened demand for these pushed commodity frontiers ever outward, into parts of the world that were not yet wholly integrated into the modern economy.”
― John Robert McNeill, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945