CONSEQUENCES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The effects of industrialization are staggering. In 1700, before fossil fuels were in use, the world’s population was 670 million. By 2011, it was 6.7 billion, a tenfold increase in only 300 years.
In the twentieth century alone, the world’s economy grew fourteenfold, per-capita income grew almost fourfold, and the use of energy expanded at least thirteenfold. This kind of growth has never before occurred in human history.
Many people around the world today enjoy the benefits of industrialization. With extra energy flowing through the system, many of us do much less physical labor than earlier generations. People today are able to feed more babies and bring them to adulthood. Many people vote and participate in modern states. These states provide education, social security, and health benefits. Large numbers of people enjoy levels of wealth, health, education, travel, and life expectancy unimagined before industrialization.
The benefits of industrialization, however, have come at great cost. For one thing, the rate of change (acceleration) is now so rapid that individuals and social systems struggle to keep up. And it can be argued that life has become depersonalized in the era of mass production.
As the industrial system has become more complex, it has also become more fragile. Industrialization needs many components to work together smoothly. Any one component could fail.
We know that many of the essential components of the industrial system, and the natural resources it depends on, are being undermined. The soil, the oceans, the atmosphere, the underground water levels, plants, and animals are all at risk.
Will uncontrolled growth continue, or are we approaching the end of an unsustainable industrial era? Whatever the future holds, we’ll be debating — and dealing with — the consequences of modernization for years to come.
