The Anthropocene and ecological awareness in Poland: The post-socialist view

Abstract

Dynamic and unrestrained socio-economic development is upsetting the balance of nature’s mechanisms, causing a climate stalemate, or even climate destabilisation. After the Second World War a new political system – real socialism – was enforced on Poland. It brought about changes of a social, cultural, economic and environmental nature. Its immanent feature was the application of top-down decisions that did not take into account environmental components. There was also little ecological awareness within Polish society at that time. The transformations of the 1990s resulted not only in the liberalisation of the Polish economy, but also in the permeation of new trends oriented towards pro-environmental activities. The aim of the article is to find an answer to the question: How is ecological awareness currently shaped in the context of Anthropocene in Poland during the transition from a socialist economy to a capitalist economic system?