Industrialization with Good and Bad Influence

Have you wondered what contributed to air pollution? Or, what ignited the innovation of building factories? If you’re wondering, the answer to these questions is the Industrial Revolution and I will explain more to you about what has happened during this era throughout my paper. This era has developed an equal opportunity between negative and positive impacts to the environment that we’re living in today. The Industrial Revolution has given the opportunity to enforce laws on keeping the environment or our world at an stable more attainable pace. Of course, laws were created but we cannot forget that this era developed a chance to encourage ways on improving our environment. For example, using solar panels for a source of energy instead of actual electricity will be one of the ways to improve our environment because it is a renewable source and it lowers the electricity bill. Who wouldn’t want a cheaper electricity bill? Personally, I am eco-friendly and I am supportive of finding new ways to help improve the environment so hopefully explaining certain aspects of the Industrial Revolution will help you take small steps on improving our environment as well.

What is Industrialization? Industrialization is what encouraged the making of machinery, the creation of mass production, and the building of factories where people were able to work but only for small wages. Honestly, we can thank Industrialization for giving us the opportunity to work or for the creation of the machines where we didn’t have to build much from the use of our hands because machines were more proficient and accurate during this time. Those factories wasn’t just a good factor, even though it provided work but factories also was insensitive when it came to considering the people that were apart of our population.

How was factories mistreating our people you ask? Well, let me explain… Let us use those who are incarcerated because of the crime that they have committed, for example, our curiosity of wondering how are their life inside of prison could result to what television improvises from the fights between inmates to the abuse of power from the police or correctional officers. Treatment in jails are different in other countries than the United States with the fact that other countries are still developing or has a low socioeconomic class. In turkey, their prison are usually overcrowded where prisoners are crammed into prison cells with little to no breathing room. The human rights of these prisons are violated where they are willing to take their own life because they’re tortured mentally, emotionally, and physically. Does that sound appealing to you? Would you even want to be in environment like that? My fingers are crossed that your answer to those questions are no. Now, I want you to compare a similar treating like that of working in factories during the Industrial Revolution era… I mean, workers human rights wasn’t violated but they weren’t provided with an equal amount of space in able to work proficiently. This made it very easy for workers to catch an illness or a disease from others, especially working around unsafe machines that they were around in these factories and the improper sanitation of the factories.

What encouraged the innovation of building factories in the first place? What was special about Britain that gave someone the idea to build factories? Britain is the birthplace of Industrialization where it began in the late 1700s before it traveled to the United States. Britain was the place where you would find coal and iron ore which was the main reason on why Industrialization was created in the first place. Before the Industrialization Revolution even began, life was so simple where people were just accustomed to farming also living in a rural community. They were living without instruction, provided their own basic necessities to get through life, and the manufacturing was usually done in their homes or in a small shop where they used hand tools and basic machinery. Even though they were their own boss, this doesn’t mean that life was easy for them as much as some of us would enjoy being our own boss. This meant that their insufficiency of funds created little income, they wasn’t able to provide the proper nutrition that they needed, and illnesses were a lot more susceptible. A known fact is that Britain is the world’s leading colonial power so the colonies was a source for quality material. Once, this idea was ignited is when the environment began to change…

Demands began to increase, the standard of living were raised, and children became apart of the workforce but life didn’t change for the unfortunate as life was still difficult. It seems as things were beginning to look up for some people now that there were factories, right? Wrong. Indeed, factories needed less involvement from humans, however, they were endangerment to our health as a population polluting the air that we would breathe along with children not being able to enjoy their childhood since they had to work extremely long hours. Breathing in polluted air during this time would’ve damaged our immune system as well as our reproductive systems. Air pollution also would’ve increased the risk of respiratory diseases, for example, if I was born around this time then my asthma would’ve been worse where I’d have to use my inhaler more or it would’ve gotten to the point where it would make it extremely hard for me to breathe enough for me to remain alive. Child labor is another topic, where children worked long hours for little money in dangerous conditions even though opportunists seen children as able bodied because they were small enough to fit in tight places where adults couldn’t. Opportunists also felt that children were more manageable besides the fact that they also believed that children didn’t deserve to make a decent amount of money for their hard work.

Now, let us look at Industrialization during the 1970s, where things began to change drastically for the world along with the environment. The global population grew tremendously with the estimate of about 4 billion, with more people has inspired the development for more transportation, communication, and banking. Majority of this growth has grew in developing regions and at least two thirds of the populations has remained in the rural community. North America had a slow growth but had an expansion of 120 million motor vehicles in the 1970s as opposing to the estimate of 220 million in the early 1990s. The first passenger service began in the 1970s, where global area travel has grew 50 times more faster than actual car travel. The world’s use of electricity has increased since the 1970s, where it has increased more than non-electric energy in both industrialized and developing countries. Global Warming began in the 1980s when it has gotten warm due to a cool period in the 1970s, where fossil fuel emissions of CO2 grew about 50 percent.

This puts the United States as the largest of emitter of greenhouse gases also climate change results from the emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels in developed countries. Regarding some of the effects of the impacts, has encouraged the development of laws and regulations to keep the environment at a steady pace. One of the laws that was implemented is called the Pollution Prevention Act, which was established within the year of 1990. The purpose of this law is to reduce pollution as well as improving technology in order to lower pollution levels. Another law that was implemented is called the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which was established within the year of 1976 and the purpose of this law is to promote protection of human health and the environment. Lastly another law that has been implemented within the year of 1976 is called the Toxic Substances Control Act, which serves to understand the health risks of certain chemical substances as well as developing scientific health risk data.

We’ve learned a few things about the Industrial Revolution, which includes some of the positive and negative impacts throughout the era. We’ve also discovered a few of the laws that were implemented in regards of the negative impacts that was harming the humans and the environment. I believe that our environment has improved a lot in comparison of the Industrial Revolution as well as there is more space for improvements. Let us discover some ways that will help us improve the environment to make it a better place. This makes me happy talking about it as I stated before I am eco-friendly so I’m supportive of what will help improve our environment. I’m going to name a few things that everyone should either slowly take it one step at a time or become more aware of the different ways that can help improve our environment. We can all recycle, which I have began to recycle plastic bottles myself since they’re reusable and I drink a lot of water. Another way is to buy locally, for example, consider buying your fruit or vegetables from the Farmer’s Market where locals grow their own produce and sell them to the public.

My grandfather and I would buy from the Farmer’s Market all the time as I remember when I was young; He still visits the Farmer’s Market as we’re speaking of today. One of my biggest things that I support of making the environment a better place is making the use of Solar Panels. Personally, I would use solar panels to generate energy throughout my home as I can use the energy of the sun, keep a low electricity bill since I support frugal living, and the most important of them all is that I’m not using electricity. Unplug your charger from the wall if you’re charging your phone anymore seeing that even though you aren’t charging your anymore that electricity is still in use from the plug remaining in the wall. There are many more examples that I can provide on making the environment a better place, however, I am going to provide one more example which is making use of reusable bags. We use so many plastic bags just to throw them away when we can just use foldable cloth bags that is portable plus it will become most handy when we are grocery shopping.

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