ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the great acceleration and its implications for the practice of the environmental governance. The concept of teleconnections, developed initially by the atmospheric scientists, has come to refer to connections among remote elements of the Earth System that are unanticipated and surprising but turn out to play important roles in the dynamics of the system as a whole. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought a pattern of human-environment relations, especially in the new world, providing textbook illustrations of the phenomenon aptly described as roving banditry. National legislation, in such forms as the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Mining Act of 1872, rested on the proposition that the public domain should be transferred into the hands of private owners sooner rather than later and generally abetted the propensity of users to exploit the natural resources with the little thought to the long-term consequences.
