What Is Industrial Revolution 5.0?
The era of the bygone ages belonged to the machines of the past. We are in the 18th century, and the Industrial Revolution has arrived. What does it bring with it? Machines, production, factories, roads and railways, increasing population, and a standard of living. Oh, and also—environmental pollution.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, life may have been pastoral, but only in poetry. The reality of a commoner was one filled with infections, poverty, harsh weather conditions, and an astonishing lack of resources. Even the wealthy nobles suffered from sore groins and deadly infections simply because there were no train cars or modern medicines to make daily struggles related to travel and disease trivial. Did you know that in the early 18th century, in some American cities, malaria patients were often treated with fever tablets and other customized remedies that the doctors cooked up on the spot to treat those on the sickbeds? These guesswork solutions did not work well, and the disease would often flare up to an epidemic scale time and again. This happened because the doctors didn’t even know what malaria was. It was only after rapid modernization, geared by the Industrial Revolution, that advancements in chemistry and other sciences led to the discovery and production of correct medicines.
The Industrial Revolution marked a significant shift in the story of human evolution. It paved the way for machines, factories, production, and a rate of consumption never seen before. Keeping all pointers aside, the one fact that could be agreed upon unanimously is that the Industrial Revolution raised the everyday standard of living. It brought the comfort of kings to the houses of peasants. Clothing, textiles, agriculture, paper, education, and many other sectors of human industry boomed at an unmitigated pace and contributed to the advancement of human society as a whole. Perhaps for the first time in history, luxury was made available on a mass scale.
There are two sides to each coin. While the Industrial Revolution brought the comforts of material life even to the house of a commoner, it also contaminated the environment with the excess release of toxic chemicals and gaseous acids into streams of water and air, respectively. Trees were chopped down and entire forest lands eradicated to be replaced by agricultural industries and industrial cities. Planet Earth took a sore blow to its health, and the quality of its ecosystem plummeted. This was only the beginning.
The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century mutated into the Industrial Revolution 2.0 of the 19th century. This time, it brought with it raucous and fuel-pumping motor cars that ran on internal combustion engines and made transport easy for everybody. They were cheap and mass-produced because factories had incorporated assembly line models and three working shifts. Everyone was producing. Everyone was making money. Thus, salaried laborers also joined the consumption game. Life was transforming rapidly, and the machines from the 18th century were going out of date. Unfortunately, the mass scale of production, globalization, growing population, and unstoppable consumption took their toll on the environment. The air was dirtier, water was untreated, cities were choked, and human-produced waste was worsening all the natural resources of the ecosystem. Not to mention that the burning of coal was at an all-time high.
The fast-growing modernization of the 19th century transformed cities into urban spaces, but it also released an insane amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These GHGs would later prove to be quite lethal for not just a country or two, but the entire world and its ecosystem.
The Industrial Revolutions 1.0 and 2.0 were followed by 3.0 and 4.0, and the same story unfolded for us—though at an exponential rate. The 3rd version, arising fresh from the brutal manpower of the two world wars, introduced the digital world into human life for the first time, and the era of the internet found its inception in the 20th century. Personal computers, television sets, and handheld devices became the objects of everyday life, and the graph of human comfort began to climb to its peak. It can be said that the whole ingenuity of the human mind could soon be found ringing and flashing in human pockets.
Fast forward to the Industrial Revolution 4.0, and the quality of everyday life has reached what is usually called an astonishing level. Now, food, shopping items, medicines, and basically all resources are delivered to us at our doorsteps, and the entire ecosystem is running at the whims of just a few fingertips on a screen. Even the kings of the bygone ages would be envious of the life that we commoners live in the 21st century. It is a world built straight out of an Isaac Asimov story, one with artificial intelligence, robots, and hyper-connectivity becoming a part of everyday human experience.
Unfortunately, the unmitigated disasters on the climate triggered by the first Industrial Revolution have also grown exponentially along with the luxuries and amenities of the contemporary world. Nations are joining hands to sign agreements and ensure that the global economy invests its capital and resources to save the planet from the untimely destruction that the unchecked development of the previous ages brought upon it. The UN has issued a worldwide warning, citing global warming and climate change as one of the most dangerous threats to human survival and the ecosystem in its entirety. The effects of industries on the planet are so severe that the whole natural landscape is shifting its shape in only a matter of years, whereas such change should have occurred over millions of years!
What does it all imply? That we suspend all the growth and development that has occurred in the past ages and go back to the time of hooligans, spending the rest of our lives in caves without air conditioning and vehicles?
The only way to move forward is to convert the current crisis into a considerable opportunity and take the cue to begin yet another Industrial Revolution. If the Industrial Revolution of the past focused on improving the standard of living for everyday people, then, in the 21st century, there is an even more pressing need to do so. This is because the growing population and the threat of climate change will create even more difficult conditions for people, making them seek the comforts of devices that have made present life so luxurious—even for the poor.
Thus, to meet the challenge, human industry must develop innovative technological solutions that not only ensure the rapid development of everyday life but also check and counter the unmitigated release of GHG emissions into the atmosphere. This can happen only through innovation, and the same movement can spark yet another Industrial Revolution. The upcoming technologies will not only build a beautiful life for all but also make the whole world into a thriving and rich ecosystem where life breathes freely—not just for some, but for all. The Industrial Revolution 5.0 will be all about the climate, and the technologies to come will make the planet livable for everyone.
