Many of us either know about the industrial revolution, or have heard about the industrial revolution in regards to climate change. Today, we are going to discuss, what is the industrial revolution, and what does it have to do with climate change?
To answer this, first we need to define the Industrial Revolution. There are technically two, the first occurring in the 1800’s, and the second in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. The industrial revolution was a monumental shift from rural living to urbanization, brought about by steam power. Steam power works by heating water into a vapor which is then pressurized and turned into mechanical energy, and then electrical energy. In order to heat the water, fossil fuels are needed. With the emergence of this new technology, which revolutionized manufacturing and labor jobs, the first step towards the extreme use of fossil fuels was taken. As production increased, and more jobs could be found in urban cities, more people began to shift from farming jobs, to factory jobs.
Along with this, a new job opened up: mining. With the need for lots of fossil fuels, companies needed to begin creating bigger operations to harvest these fossil fuels. With factories and trains both having a high demand for fossil fuels, this industry became incredibly important. (In my opinion, this is where humanity first started to lose its connection with nature.) This is also where carbon emissions began to rapidly rise. On any carbon emissions graph you find on the internet, you will notice a steady increase of carbon emissions throughout time until the 1800’s. This increase is not significant, and could barely be called an increase at all (if we are being honest). However, things take a drastic turn for the worst once we reach the 1800’s. On these graphs, you can see the exponential growth of carbon emissions in the 1800’s, continuing on to today. An example of one of these carbon emissions graphs is shown below:
To better explain how the industrial revolution impacted carbon emission and the climate, we will introduce you to the bathtub analogy. Imagine you are filling up a bathtub but you haven’t closed the drain all the way. As water pours from the spout, only some of it remains in the bathtub and the rest drains out. This is what earth was like before the industrial revolution. Some natural ‘greenhouse gases’ are being emitted and trapped in the atmosphere, but nature quickly takes care of excess amounts. Now imagine that you have added a second water spout, pouring two times the amount of water into the bathtub. Even with the drain opened, water will begin to pool much faster and will eventually overflow. This is what earth is like now. Nature is still trying to rid our atmosphere of the excess ‘greenhouse gases’ but they are being put there at a rate that is too quick for nature alone.
So hopefully, as you have been reading, you have been able to see all of the changes that the industrial revolution brought upon society, as well as the shift towards climate destruction that also occurred. Stay tuned for the next installment of this series! Next week we will keep moving forward and discuss the global cooling scare in the 1970’s!
- The Edible Landscape Initiative Team
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