The Reality Behind a Clean World

The Industrial Revolution was an era that brought exquisite innovations that have shaped our world into its current state, whether that be machinery, transportation, or architecture, without this developmental period society would not be where it is today. However, the conundrum we are faced with is the detrimental affects that these technological innovations have brought forward, such as: pollution, deforestation, nuclear waste, the list goes on. This dilemma cannot merely be seen as a social development and an environmental catastrophe, because the two are dependent on one another. Furthermore, this can also be compared to the dilemma of the development of the core and periphery relationship. The questions that can be asked are, would the environment thrive if there were no people, and would the Global North thrive if there were no Global South? The answer lies in the the search of a balance between society’s economic growth and environmental sustainability. Since the second half of the 18th century, humans have produced a domino affect of technological innovations that continuously work together to further society’s developmental horizons. Global communication through the invention of the telegraph has supplied human-kind with the ability to work together to utilize resources, new machinery has found ways to efficiently utilize those same resources and produce mass amounts of revenue, and trade has worked as the fundamental backbone of humanity to give each country the opportunity to capitalize on their region’s assets. However, this is not the reality of what industrialization has brought to society. Instead, with each new invention there comes the social issues that surround it. The problems connected with the industrial revolution mostly come from resources and labor, which are often found in less developed countries (LDC). In extension, one of the most prominent problems with technological development was colonization, an issue that could be portrayed as purely social, but quickly became solely economic. For example, when cotton, a common textile used for the fabrication of clothing, became one of the most economical beneficial markets, Great Britain, a core country, was on the hunt for the source of these resources to develop their own hometowns, not those where they were ‘found’, such as India (a periphery country). Therefore, industrialization produced an economic growth for Europeans, through import duties, rise in prices, and the ability for India to then depend on Great Britain’s surplus in demand, resulting in social issues such as child labor, working conditions, and living conditions.

In comparison, social affects are merely half of the argument when assessing the global conundrum of economic growth versus environmental sustainability. The affect of industrialization on the environment can be related to the notions of the Anthropocene, an epoch where humans have the most significant alternating factors to the change in Earth’s geology. Meaning, that human activities that originated from the industrial revolution can be defined as some of the most altering factors to our earth’s ecosystems. In extension, as innovation continues to be promoted, population and consumption maintain growth as well, resulting in an overall economic growth for society, and detrimental affects on the environment. An example of one of the most harmful factors of our environment’s destruction is humanity’s ecological footprint through oil manufacturing and consumption, a market that has steadily grown since the invention of the steam engine, and often depended on by less developed countries for their wealth. On the other hand, Angus Wright mentions that the initial stages of industrialization are damaging towards the environment, but at a certain point of growth in economic production, the severity of environmental damage actually begins to decrease. The beginning of the industrial revolution served as a tunnel vision towards development of core regions, and ignored not only the periphery countries around the world, but lacked awareness of the environments they were damaging in the process. As mentioned earlier, the domino effect of each futuristic idea after another not only focuses on the economic value of every idea, but also the environmental sustainability of each of these ideas. In result, not only are core societies around the world becoming more environmentally aware, they are taking the fundamental sources of energy that humanity consumes every day, and finding economical stable and sustainable options. The problem with sustainable options is directly correlated with economic growth, because if countries in the Global North have innovative minds that can continuously produce ideas that give them the ability to be environmentally friendly without the utilization of periphery region’s resources, then Global South countries will quickly perish. Therefore, society is now faced with a conglomerate of paths that disperse into completely different directions, whether that be the financial assistance towards less developed countries because of their inability to develop, or perhaps using these finances towards further innovating areas that can propel western society to a higher point than it is currently in. If path dependencies continue to influence the perspective of core regions upon deciding who to benefit, then capitalization upon peripheries region’s resources will no longer be necessary, this now puts the Global North into a position that allows them to avoid resources from the Global South and ultimately put a barrier between the two sections of the globe. This would result in a less advanced population whose social identity and regional resources lead them down a path that would completely disregard the sustainable development that the other side of the world would be making. An unfair trade-off then becomes continuously more realistic when put into the shoes of citizens from opposites sides of the socio-economic spectrum. Lastly, to conclude with an option that must be chosen to allow the planet to continue to survive would be impossible, solely because of where this answer is being written from. History has shown us that as rich regions thrive, poor regions crumble, as seen during the Atlantic Slave Trade, when European colonizers profited from the men and women taken from Africa; or, when the United States was able to neo-colonize Mexico’s e

cologically autonomous country to profit from their sugar fields. The question of economic growth versus environmental sustainability can not only question whether society should thrive for a profit from the consequences of our environment, but we must also question the social issues that are surrounded with this conundrum. In the case of alternative energy sources, a common topic when discussing sustainable innovations, the only people that can truly thrive from this are situated in the Global North, because of the technological resources and intelligence to follow through with these ideas. On the other hand, countries in the Global South depend on the oil (a common energy source) exports to simply survive, not thrive, survive. The comparison between which countries thrive and which don’t directly correlates to the resources each region has to survive. The list between who can sustain themselves and truly label themselves autonomous can not be a way to identify success; because, success in the big picture is survival, and without the sustainable habits of humanity working together as one, survival is not an option. Therefore, there is no trade-off between the positives and negatives from this dilemma of economic growth versus environmental sustainability, there is only an attempt at finding a solution that can allow as many people to survive as possible.