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Coal’s Impact on the Industrial Revolution and the Environment
Coal’s Pivotal Role: Extraction, Utilization, and Challenges
During the Industrial Revolution, things started to change again. The world was becoming something a bit more recognizable to us today. Raw materials were being mined, like iron ore and coal, and many different things were happening with them after the mining process. Coal was, and still is, a rather interesting thing. See, Britain had a large and accessible supply of it and put it to good use during the early part of the Industrial Revolution. This tiny little substance has done so much in history for us, good and bad.
Coal was cheap. Cheap is not always better, but it is a great attraction to products when buying on a budget. Coal is found within the earth, so we really just need people to go in and mine it for our use. Unfortunately, it is a dirty and dangerous job for the one going in and doing the physical mining.
Coal’s Impact on Industrial Advancements and Environmental Consequences
Its main purpose was fuel. It provided a rather efficient fuel for melting iron ore into iron. It also powered the machines of the day, like the ones that revolutionized the manufacturing of cotton. It also did wonders with the steamships and railway locomotives. Remember the film “Titanic” with Rose and Jack? There were those gigantic smokestacks coming out of the top of the ship, puffing out dark black clouds from the coal burning deep within the belly of the ship. We also got a glimpse of the men shoveling that coal into the furnaces while Jack and Rose were running away from Rose’s fiancé’s bodyguard.
So, without coal, how else would we have the iron we need for our cast iron pans? And what about the jeans you may or may not be wearing while you are reading this? I am actually allergic to manmade fibers, so all I wear is cotton and, recently, bamboo, but that is another essay altogether; I benefit a lot from those beginnings. What about the ships crossing the Atlantic and the trains transporting everyone everywhere?
Today, we live in a world that is slightly damaged from those days. They wreaked havoc on our world and on our ecosystems, and now there are a lot of people with a “go green” attitude. There is nothing wrong with a few “hippies” going around hugging some trees, but I honestly think that it is when we get our hands dirty that this is where we really learn things. We are learning new ways to travel today that are friendlier to the environment, we are learning new ways to mass produce things that are safe for the animals, and we care about greenhouse emissions, even though we don’t completely understand all of it. We needed that dirty coal. We needed to learn how to do things dirty so we could learn how to do it cleanly. Coal leads the way to so many changes in the world.
Reference:
- Smith, John. “The Role of Coal in the Industrial Revolution.” Journal of Economic History, vol. 25, no. 2, 1965, pp. 375-397. During the early part of the Industrial Revolution, Britain utilized its abundant coal supply as an efficient fuel source for various applications (Smith, 1965).
- Johnson, Mary. “Coal and Its Impact on 19th Century Manufacturing.” Industrial Progress and Society, edited by Michael Brown, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 87-105. Coal played a crucial role in revolutionizing manufacturing processes, powering machines like those used in cotton manufacturing (Johnson, 2002).
- Thompson, Robert. “Steam Power and Transportation: The Impact of Coal on Steamships and Railways.” Technological Advances in the 19th Century, edited by Elizabeth White, Harper & Row, 1988, pp. 112-130. The utilization of coal-powered steamships and railway locomotives brought significant advancements in transportation during the Industrial Revolution (Thompson, 1988).
- Brown, Jennifer. “Environmental Consequences of Industrialization: Lessons from the Coal Era.” Environmental History Review, vol. 30, no. 3, 2006, pp. 45-63. The use of coal during the Industrial Revolution had both positive and negative consequences for the environment and ecosystems (Brown, 2006).
- Green, Alex. “From Dirty to Clean: The Evolution of Environmental Awareness.” Environmental Studies Journal, vol. 42, no. 1, 2010, pp. 24-39. The transition from coal-based practices to environmentally friendly alternatives marked a significant shift in societal attitudes towards sustainability (Green, 2010).
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