Think of the Industrial Revolution

When I think of the Industrial Revolution I think of supply and demand. The Industrial Revolution took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, during a period in which many areas were mostly rural societies in Europe and America, before becoming industrialized. Then, urban city life was born, ultimately creating power driven machinery, factories, jobs and economic development.
Before the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing was often prepared in people’s homes or farms using basic tools or simple machines. Industrialization caused a massive change in mass production of goods such as textiles and iron.

Also, the transportation industry experienced substantial renovation during the Industrial Revolution due to steam engines. The Industrial Revolution sounds like an astounding leap forward in modern times, as well as a better quality of life and jobs for everyone. Sadly, the Industrial Revolution had a dark side that still haunt us to this very day.

Factory workers’ wages were low and working environments were often dangerous and tedious. Workers had no job security and few rights forget about OSHA. Children of poor families where forced to quit school and became part of the developing work force and often worked long hours, doing extremely dangerous jobs such as cleaning unsafe machinery.

With his boom in the industry came a boom in the population, creating the massive birth rate of the 1700s. The world’s human population grew by about 57 percent, or 700 million, and it would stretch to one billion in 1800, before reaching two billion people in 1927. This was a huge amount of growth in terms of population. Not to mention, all of these people would need resources including food, water, living space and waste by-products. To begin with, this was taxing on plants and other natural recourses. With this growing population, supply and demand grew, more factories came about, there were more jobs, more trains, more iron, more money, but ultimately less caring about the earth.

During the Industrial Revolution, there was this explosion in population and industry power. Something referred to as fossil fuel came about, which mainly was coal yes, coal fueled the beating heart of the Industrial Revolution. Sadly, this fossil fuel was not heart healthy because coal increases substantial amounts of new carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (Brooks, 2018).

Carbon dioxide is a dangerous greenhouse gas that leads to global warming, which is a grave problem in today’s society. Today we are facing the consequences of greenhouse gas and trying to find and implement clean renewable energy. Also, coal mining takes a dangerous and devious toll on the earth, as coal mining requires large areas of land to be disturbed. Further, run offs produce water pollution, which can affect all plant and animal life including humans, not to mention the people’s poor lungs and overall health who work in the dark depths of the treacherous coil mines.

How did the people, machinery and coal get from one place to another? Not by horse or wagons, but by train. In 1767, Richard Reynolds fashioned a set of rails for moving the infimum coal at Coalbrookdale; these were initially wood but became iron rails, iron rails that were forged by sweltering coal fires. The idea of railroads moved forward like blitzkrieg, linking factories minds and cities. Were there benefits of these railroads? Of course, there were benefits it was positively revolutionary being able to move everything you need so simply and at a low cost. Along with rails ways sprung up new towns, businesses and shops with no regard for the environmental impact or the habit of the wild life and vegetation (Brooks, 2018). Thus, damaging the ecosystem and possibly caused a criminal chain reaction killing plants and animals.

Around the 1960s and 1970s, there was a movement to protect the environment due to oil spills, military testing and pollution from factories and cars. The environmental movement focused its power on pollution and successfully pressured Congress to pass measures to promote cleaner air and water. As the movement continued and grow, more concerns where brought to light such as the disposal of toxic waste. This movement speared worldwide, tracking the issues of ozone depletion and global warming.

This movement made way for laws to be put in place to protect our precious and vital environment. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Clean Air Act (CAA) are the wide-ranging federal laws that regulate air emissions for stationary and mobile sources. The EPA also established the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect public health and public welfare and to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants. These laws have had great success according to the EPA.
EPA has developed many renewable energy and energy efficiency programs designed to help people all over the United States. Further, there is now an influence on policy makers and energy supplier’s byway of providing information, creating forums between the public and private sector and providing technical assistance and information adopt energy efficiency and renewable energy policies and practices. There is also a slurry of green and renewable energy available to us such as solar, wind, hybrid cars, stable food sources and locally farmed foods.

While Industrial Revolution propelled human progress to astonishing levels, it came at extraordinary costs to the environment, and ultimately to the health and wellbeing of all living things. Industrial Revolution was a domino effect that started, prompting the need for more space, food, water, waste and other resources due to all of the people. To meet the need, mass production gave way to factories, which gave way to fuel for the factories, which gave way to a rail system to move people and equipment and fuel. All of this came at the sake of the earth and its fragile habits. These three factors snowballed, causing damage to our world and taught us a harsh lesson in the price of progress.

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