The Link Between Industrialization and Environmental Chamge

Industrialization or Industrial Civilization is a complex subject. The clearest definition for industrial civilization would that it “refers to the state of civilization following the Industrial Revolution, characterized by widespread use of powered machines”. As Rachel puts it, it demands an infinite amount of resources in a finite earth and that alone, makes industrial civilization dangerous for everything on Earth that life depends upon to continue to live. Industrialization is a complex series of socioeconomic ways of life that has become quite conspicuous from the 18th century. And in the same context it is “highly significant as the first truly global civilization, integrating all parts of the globe into a single unit for the first time”. Now that it is clear to what industrial civilization is, questions need to extrapolate from these statements regarding Industrial Civilization: If it demands so much resources, how come is it still in occurrence? Why has it not been discontinued if it poses as such danger to humanity? What result could infer from this so called threat? When will the resources reach the stopping point? Where will that then leave us, the species?

Nowadays the focus of the society on the function of economic growth has become quite unsustainable as wealth is dependent upon the destruction of the biosphere, so basically what this means is that societies and their economies depend on the health of the environment in order to function. Mike Ray’s view is that capitalism thrives on the back of cheap labor, but even these jobs are not safe from machines. According to Jan Mertl and Radim Valenĉík, this change in focus resembles the challenging of the traditional social policy similarly to the 19th century, this led to the introduction of many socioeconomic systems that then led to the situation we have today. They also postulated that even with the restrictions that the earth has posed, there can be economic growth. Zuber Angkasa Wazir (2017) proposes that these changes of the society’s focus is created mainly through social institutions and that is because society regard social institution as significant parts of the community. According to Carstens (2018) “the socioeconomic structures of industrial civilization are built on the premise that living creatures and ecosystems are nothing more than inert and exploitable resources.”

This whole ordeal likely began in the 19th century. Elizabeth argues that “it may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing”. Jerzy Zubrzycki (1983) argues that the knowledge that is fundamental to our professions should be based profoundly on a view of a person in a modern society and he proposes that humans handed themselves to Industrialization with hope that it would bring hope.

As it stands, the 6th mass extinction is in motion as a result of human consumption and human activities. Jones (2009) claims that human beings are the ones that are altering the process of evolution of new species. Diamond (2004) clarifies and verifies this statement by stating that the humanity is facing these environmental problems: Destruction or loss of natural resources; ceilings of natural resources; Harmful things we produce: population issues. These problems are solely based upon human behavior as they are controlled only by us. The future threats may be divided into short and long term categories. The difference is that short term depends on whether we behave ourselves correctly and long term on the other hand isn't entirely based on whether behave ourselves, it has already gotten out of hand and the least we could do is minimize our production and consumption. Extinction events are accompanied by burst of evolutionary innovation and speciation.

The human race is not the first species to alter the biosphere through its activities with a resultant impact on other species’ viability, that distinction belongs to the photosynthetic organisms that produced oxygen to create the atmosphere on which all subsequent life has depended. The 6th mass extinction is yet to be the most significant extinction that the Earth will experience if it will even be present. It is said that human production dictates ecological principles and values.

We cannot prevent environmental change or species extinction. It will take all the political force that can be marshaled just to influence the direction and rate of change of the natural world. What we can do is to try to affect the rate of extinction and direction of environmental change in such a way as to make a decent life for human beings possible.