Industrialization

Historical Roots

The Industrial Revolution began around the turn of the 19th century. It marked a significant turn in human history, sparking a protracted effort to lower risk to human survival by increasing economic surplus, and mastering the environment. The Industrial Revolution's shorter-term impacts included a general increase in the living standard, improved overall nutrition and health, increased life spans, intensification of global trading, and increased gaps between the rich and poor within and across nations. The level of industrialization is a measure for a country's stage of development. Increased industrialization implies a higher quality of life and progress for a country's residents.

Industrialization initially emerged in Britain in the context of emerging capitalist social relations and rapidly spread to North America and Western Europe. Later, in the 20th century, communist and [Page 540]socialist economies adopted industrial processes and technology. Industrial development continues today in widely varying cultural circumstances, in nations such as China, India, and Indonesia, which are now major contributors of airborne pollutants.

Industrialization, historically seen as a linear process, is particularly suited to enriching mass societies because it allows for the efficient exploitation of vast amounts of natural resources and the use of fossil fuels to produce goods seen as necessary for improved overall social well-being. In essence, industrialization allows for the creation of an economic surplus that, in the relatively short term, lessens risk and increases the comfort for large segments of the population around the globe. Where industrialization is limited, living standards tend to be lower, with attendant poverty, poor health, and shortened lifespan.

Widespread Benefits

Typical analyses of industrialization study changes in local, regional, national, and global economies; social class relationships; government policy; industrial locations; and work processes and industrial organizations. While industrialization's impacts have been debated, the predominant view has been positive, equating industrialization with human progress. Until relatively recently, industrialization's environmental impacts have been ignored or relegated to the background. The mainly positive view of industrialization has prevailed, despite a long history of profit-maximizing firms that failed to account fully for the environmental costs of natural-resource extraction and production.

The positive view of industrialization is pervasive and understandable. For example, the overall wealth of developed countries is a powerful example for countries seeking to industrialize. The compelling myth that a seemingly unlimited supply of material goods is essential to individual freedom and happiness, a corollary to Adam Smith's insatiable wants and needs, bolsters this view. As industrialization spreads to more areas of an increasingly global sociocultural system, the growing demand for fuel and goods increases stress on the planet's ecosystems.

Challenges to Industrialization

The traditional linear economics of industrialization posed a particularly thorny problem for the environment. Until relatively recently, industrial efficiency tended to revolve around ways to transform various materials into finished goods in the quickest, cheapest way, with limited regard for byproducts that may have had value if processed or reprocessed. Waste minimization was not a high priority because the costs of limiting pollution appeared to exceed the cost of releasing toxins into the air, soil, and water. In fact, for generations, economists tended to write off pollution costs as an externality, a price paid by someone else, not the industrial operation creating the pollution. Only in the past generation or so have plant operators, responding to laws and economic realities, focused on building loops to capture and reuse what once was considered waste.

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