After the disruption caused by two world wars and the Great Depression, the scale and pace of human activities increased dramatically after 1950 alongside a rapid expansion in the human population. The harnessing of resources for mass production and mass consumption, transport and communications innovations, the installation of new industrial technologies, cheap energy, and investment in high-yield agriculture, all contributed to unprecedented rates of growth. Accelerating human enterprise also placed ever-greater demands on natural resources, as well as exacerbating stress on the Earth's ecosystems.

This volume examines the impacts of rising population and the intensification of economic activity across multiple ecosystems – cultivated, forest, marine, riverine, and urban. Humankind has become the most powerful influence on those ecosystems leading many scientists to propose a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. It also shows that, while public awareness of environmental problems increased significantly from the mid-twentieth century onwards, in most cases local and global action to tackle them did not progress nearly fast enough.

Drawing upon both visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of the Environment in the Age of Acceleration presents an overview of the period and examines key cultural case studies on the themes of earth; skies, climate, and the atmosphere; work, energy, and power; water; forests; animals; cities and settlements; war; and disasters and resilience.