Industrialization and Its Early Impacts: A Snapshot of Transition Over Time

1. Industrialization and its early impacts Remotely sensed image of Tol, FSM shows land and reef. Limits mostly on village level and global warming.

2. A brief and incomplete snapshot of the transition over time (see Foster’s “The Vulnerable Planet” for more).

3. Foster says the story of environmental degradation that triggered conv. and presv. movements is best understood by looking at how these interact: 1. Population increase 2. Increased accumulation and consumption of “stuff” as wealth increases (more stuff = more resources used to make it) 3. Energy and “throughput” (waste) associated with the technology used. All three have changed over time, as seen in our env. history I = P *A*T

4. Echohistorical periods Periods in which human activities have led to relatively uniform changes in nature as ways of socially organizing and production evolve. E.G. matches transformation of landscapes, air, water qual. Foster MOVs 1, 2,4, 5 show transition

5. Dates are approximations only, and changes not exactly at the same time Eotechnic era traces through Starts with the end of pre-10,000 BP Hunter-Gather period of living relatively w/n nature’s limits with a MUCH smaller population Development of Agriculture 10,000 years ago (in the U.S.)

6. 2000 BP Evolution of tributary societies around the world made certain regions responsiblefor specific cropsand at timesoverworked the land. At times whole regions stripped of forest & ecosystems (e.g. Rome) and people became peasant slaves tied to rulers and nobility’s land. Soil exhaustion, deforestation, overgrazing lead to great famines and epidemics Roman empire maps

7. earth.g Sumerian, Indus valley (Iraq), Greek, Phoenician, Roman and Mayan civilizations all collapsed in part due to environmental factors e.g. salt crust from irrigation regimes

8. 1400s-1700s Mercantile stage of capitalism and age of “discovery” improve life in some areas due to environmental degradation in far away places. Science serves the goal to stretch nature’s limits and move products long distances rather than rely on just local resources. Slavery in the U.S. made much of this domination of nature possible through cheap labor for cash-crops. MONOCULTURE prominent. Markets and soil use use helped drive capture of W. U.S. native lands. Animals too (not many fossil fuel driven machines yet!)

9. Colonialism, environment and development East India Company ruled India backed by English military with conquests beginning in the 1600s and stretching to late 1800s -- when the English military took over after rebellions. They wanted cheap natural resources and labor (“inputs”), and to force their products on locals by taxing their own textiles etc. so that English goods would have a competitive advantage. Changing India to an export economy hurt nutrition and ecology. There was no “India” nation state, and company/English elites used Indian royalty as middle men, rewarding them for helping to establish their network.

10. Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, became the first British Governor of Bengal. English monoculture environmental impacts spread to India

11. Noting how our expanding consumption was impacting nature and people around the 1900s, some pushed for development w/n nature’s limits... E.G. buffalo J.B. Foster says conservation started in the late 19th century because people were concerned that free market-based (capitalist with little regulation) economies were depleting resources without a conscience (e.g. gold rush). FOSTER MOV 3 Conservationists wanted land to be valued for more that one particular economic value at a specific time. Like e.g.?

12. What is this and how does it represent “limits?”

13. But what is conservation and what is preservation? Conservation Sensible and careful use of natural resources by humans, often including an effort to try to reduce pollution. People who adopt this view often are trying to avoid “risks,” and they often use science to help them (forests and seahorse breeding). Pinchott FDR In response to such concerns and human-centric conservation approaches Preservationists Person concerned primarily with setting aside or protecting undisturbed natural areas form harmful human activities (e.g. Muir).

14. What do you know about the industrial revolution(s) / development? What did it represent to you coming into this class? Is this era over everywhere?

15. Paleotechnic era Industrial revolution(s) starts late 1700s-1800s in most of the West/North Adam Smith’s pin factory Implications for env. health, wealth, and env. of modern city (50 percent), disease, dirty

16. Era begins in the early to mid-1700s in “backward” England, and the mid-1800s in the U.S., with a fairly rapid decline in the early 1900s. The process is uneven and does not occur everywhere in the world. Some Nordic countries arguably skip this phase. (Though they can’t escape their neighbor’s acid rain.) Is this the early origin of globalization and combined military-government- and economic force as a strategy to dominate globally? Ports forced open Indian population forced to buy English lower quality textiles.

17. What materials were needed to sell in this store and what were the ecological impacts?

18. Transition from wood to metal-based production and consumption Craftsman to templates and ornate to high volume (US)--consumption up Transition to future tense technologies Transition to economy/governance (including military) that led us to today’s free trade and capitalistic path that drives globalization (Adam Smith deified but misunderstood) Miller mining figs from ppt coal seam map or yorkshire Resulting in social organization that revolves around nurturing the “technics” that make this economy and capital accumulation possible. ? e.g. think Ford? Assembly lines and machines for MASS production and resource use feeding it.

19. Lack of regulation and bureaucracy leads to pollution of air and streams -Cholera, typhoid, etc. in the U.S. -Open sewers (later a river catches on fire) -Black lung and lung cancer -Cost of cleaning buildings etc. Lag: Occupational health and environmental agencies late neotechnic creations in the U.S. (EPA 1970!!)

20. Industrialization spurs urbanization of nation (factories need people) • Late 19th century rural migration to urban areas • Immigrants from rural U.S., freed slaves from South, and Eastern & Southern Europe

21. Transformation of movement and speed: -Transportation and adoption of the steam engine from an earlier period -Bigger is more efficient (automatically “better” -- economies of scale in the workplace and in transportation) -Mechanism and use of metal key -Mines as the origin of the modern RR - Do you want Pentium II? MUMFORD FIGS 181 2ND HALF

22. Some examples of advances -Tools were refined and increased in number -Mass production of clothes, and in some cases, food -Travel improved for some classes -- 1819 the Savanna crossed the Atlantic in 26 days, in 1866 it dropped to 7 days 20 hours -Screws and other parts made more reliably and in a standardized way

23. Cities grow around industry; rapid and haphazard growth • Lack of sanitary infrastructure or organization

24. U.S. METRO MAP U.S. POP MAP

25. Slums develop for immigrants, poor, and workers • Unhealthy environment • Sanitary Movement tackles sanitary infrastructure with some good results in places Picture of early slum Angela’s Ashes

26. OHSHA • Industrial disease rampant in all industries; unregulated • ‘Phossy Jaw’ - disfiguring disease afflicting matchmakers - phosphorous matches banned in 1912 • Infant mortality rates up 300 percent vs. rural in some urban areas

27. Hull House – Settlement House Chicago, Ill • Progressive Movt in 1890s: social reform, gov’t in the public interest • Settlement Houses offer place for interaction in poor communities • Alice Hamilton investigates industrial disease

28. A classic study: John Snow The “father of medical geography and/or epidemiology” In the mid-1850s, there were two major theories about the transmission of cholera. Dr. Snow used techniques which would later be known as medical geography to confirm that the transmission of the disease occurred by swallowing contaminated water or food and not by inhaling infected air. Dr. Snow knew that he had identified the transmission method for the "cholera poison." This "poison" was later identified as the bacterium VIBRIO CHOLERAE . Cholera leads to an infection of the small intestine which results in extreme diarrhea which may lead to massive dehydration and death. The disease can be treated by giving the victim a lot of fluids -- either by mouth or intravenously (into the blood stream).

29. Cholera a common disease in the U.S. up to the 1800s and early 1900s.

32. Changes mostly understood and celebrated as “progress” Mumford wrote: “... paleotechnic reached its highest point, in terms of its own concepts and ends, in England in the middle of the nineteenth century: its ... triumph was the great industrial exhibition in the new Crystal Palace at Hyde Park in 1851: the first World Exposition, an apparent victory for free trade, free enterprise, free invention, and free access to all the world’s markets by the country boasted already that it was the workshop of the world.” pp154-155

33. Technics, social organization, and economy demand dramatic energy transformation -- thus the birth of high carbon consumption -- a finite resource. ?Impacts on environment and public health? Brueghel the Elder, Jan [Flemish, 1568-1625] MUMFORD FIGS PAGE 149 2ND SIDE, 340

34. In the neotechnic phase some lessons arguably were learned, thus, enabling reforms through a stronger role for governance and regulation. A greater emphasis on quality of life is reflected in the following period. by elements such as a change in the government’s role, architecture, regulation, and laws pertaining to public health.

35. I disagree that we moved out of the other phase unless we transition from fossil fuel use and less reliance on finite resources -- pollution just moved (steel and 3rd world dumping)? Governance ensured some places followed a somewhat different path. Romania Relatively abandoned industrial age core of Baltimore Mountainous Romania VS. Leeds or Baltimore In much of world people want to move to city, in U.S. we abandon and commute as poss

36. Eotechnic, Paleotechnic and Neotechnic phases altered most of the “West” or “Global North” by 1938.

37. Mineral extraction KEY to such transformations…. But how does mineral extraction from earth feed such changes?

38. Lots needed for transformation, but what are mineral resources? A concentration of naturally occurring material in or on the Earth’s crust that can be extracted and processed into useful materials at an affordable cost.

39. Gold and coal

40. Gold landscape 3-d panorama

42. Smelting After gangue (waste material) is removed heat and chemicals are used to separate metal from other elements in the ore. Without proper regulation land, vegetation, water and air can be impacted horribly (superfund sites). http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/npl.htm http://www.epa.gov/superfund/action/process/denphoto.htm Other processes are quite toxic too e.g. use of cyanide, or even use of mercury to extract gold, (wherein one teaspoon in a 2.5 acre lake can make fish unfit for consumption esp. when pregnant). 2.5 Xs CDC area

43. A look beneath the surface! Some are point sources and some not -- we address this again in a later talk

44. Subsurface Mine Opening Surface Mine Runoff of sediment Acid drainage from reaction of mineral or ore with water Spoil banks Percolation to groundwater Leaching may carry acids into soil and ground water supplies Leaching of toxic metals and other compounds from mine spoil

45. Our situation today: - Over 500,000 mines on the U.S. landscape, most in the West, cleanup costs into the billions of dollars -- IF we clean up. - Land subsidence and collapse breaking sewer lines, gas mains, tilting houses - Wind and water erosion has polluted 40% of Western watersheds! - Acid mine drainage (& acid rain) major problem (Bloomsburg on Map) Gold landscape 3-d panorama leave pg 213-227 to tas add more details here and email

46. ? “Unaccounted for costs” in this selection of energy source in places like the Ruhr and Lille in Germany, W. Pennsylvania? Legacy? Benjamin Franklin and alternative sources eschewed (not in all of Europe) -- cooking oil in LV and coconut oil in Fiji. Map? =s

47. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=maps_pagehttp://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=maps_page and look at the Board

48. For Marx the results were: -Competition that ripped families apart -Depressed wages -Failure to educate -Lengthened hours (4 hour LA commutes!) -Recreation reduced -Speeded up motion -Stupefying and repetitive work-a goal of “machine-like” precision (think Ford) -Youth lost

49. Some argue that certain multinational companies are making the same elite to elite/corrupt deals to make their gains and grab resources and dominate. This is the part of globalization critics say is focused on economic domination.

50. How should we cope with the legacy? How much forest is left in England? How is the water quality in the U.S. -- over 40 percent impaired? What is air quality like in Vegas, Honolulu, LA, NY, etc.? Can you still eat the fish and shellfish in the streams or bays in Manila? Are the cancer rates higher near toxic dumps in New York? These are things that hit the headlines every day. They are relevant to your life!