Industrialisation (UK) or industrialization (US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive reorganisation of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing. Industrialisation is associated with increase of polluting industries heavily dependent on fossil fuels. With the increasing focus on sustainable development and green industrial policy practices, industrialisation increasingly includes technological leapfrogging, with direct investment in more advanced, cleaner technologies.
Industrialisation also means the mechanisation of traditionally manual economic sectors such as agriculture.
Factories, refineries, mines, and agribusiness are all elements of industrialisation.
An 1886 portrait by Robert Koehler depicting agitated workers facing a factory owner in a strike
A panorama of Guangzhou at dusk
Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. Ecologism is more commonly used in continental European languages, while environmentalism is more commonly used in English but the words have slightly different connotations.
Environmentalism on United States stamps
Levels of air pollution rose during the Industrial Revolution, sparking the first modern environmental laws to be passed in the mid-19th century.
John Ruskin, an influential thinker who articulated the Romantic ideal of environmental protection and conservation
Original title page of Walden by Henry David Thoreau