Join the green industrial revolution

Our society is in the midst of an unprecedented transformation through the development of clean technologies (sometimes refers to green technologies or environmental technologies) that are more energy efficient and environmentally clean. Scholars such as Jeremy Rifkin and Nicholas Stern have predicted a new industrial revolution with a strong environmental connection based on green technologies and which I refer to in this as the ‘green industrial revolution’. Since green issues underpin almost every aspect of our lives, we hardly think or even notice that we are actually walking into the new era of green industrial revolution.

To understand the narratives of green industrial revolution, we should briefly touch upon the first and second industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution in 18^th & 19^th century brought profound changes to human civilisation. It concentrated primarily on producing goods and services, which we never experienced previously in human history. It was a transition from the rural economy (e.g. working on the land) to urban economy (e.g. manufacturing and commerce). Consequently, it had effects on socio-economic & environmental conditions not only in Britain but also in other countries around the world. Rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and increased fossil fuel consumption - particularly coal, had put huge damaging effects on the quality of the environment. This trend is still going on even in the present days.

The second industrial revolution, also known as the technological revolution merged with the first industrial revolution around 1850. According to the scholars, the second industrial revolution was usually dated between 1870 and 1914, where many of the important technological advances that took place for example, the growth of steel & chemical industry, expansion of the usage of electricity, replacing the steam powered engine by the internal combustion engine, increase agriculture productivity and food processing to mass production in the other sectors etc. However, environmental and ecosystem impact in the midst of such technological development were the least of people's concerns.

Today we are living in a world where environmental drive is not a romantic environmentalism anymore; rather it is a hard choice between collaboration versus confrontation with the earth's carrying capacity. While our world is facing growing environmental challenges, the green industrial revolution seems to be the driver for the green economic growth - where the economic growth and development have shared goals and effectively show a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.

The journey towards building a sustainable future have already started and we don't need to go too far to see it. Let’s take the example of using mobile phones which we all desperately try to get hold of. It is remarkable to see how the usages of mobile phones have grown so fast in the last decade and it shows no slowing down. Just imagine the environmental impacts of these (millions and billions) of mobile phones going to the landfills for waste disposal at their end of life. It would be a tremendous waste of resources; in addition it would certainly increase negative impacts on the local environment. Producers of these mobile phones face continual pressure to increase productivity while lowering costs and having negative environmental impacts (in this case, particularly from their products). Under these circumstances, producers ought to look for more sustainable design innovation e.g. recycling product designs, reducing component size and weight and utilisation of biomass resources (e.g. plastics made from corn, sugar cane and wheat starch etc.) as raw materials.

It says when sustainability drives innovation, everybody wins. Pursuing a sustainable society would not be fulfilled without the development of innovative environmental technologies. Motorola, Nokia and Samsung all have handsets made from recycled plastic materials and it is compatible with their business growth, technological innovation and standing up for their commitments to sustainability. Mobile phone is just one example out of many. However, examples of clean technology are all around us. This includes green manufacturing (e.g. environmentally friendly products and processes), green chemistry (e.g. molecular level pollution prevention), renewable technologies (e.g. wind power, solar power, biomass, tidal energy, hydro-power etc.), energy efficiency appliances, lighting, recycling, green transportation, information technology and many more. All these clean technologies have made its presence visible in all aspects of our lives in both developed and developing countries.

Finally, the key factor for green industrial transformations is the advanced energy innovation, which would ultimately help create a green market economy and consequently create more jobs in the new green industries. Successful countries will be those who will embrace this transformation. It is claimed that the countries that will lead this green industrial revolution will be the leaders of 21st century. However, the concern is if this new technology remains in the hand of big corporations or countries then it will not benefit all the developing countries unless there is a level playing field. Also, introducing any new green technology into a social system without addressing the social questions of access to and who gets the benefits from it will raise some fundamental social inequality questions. We need to address the issues of inabilities of poor to afford these technologies otherwise the dream of a sustainable future will still remain a distant future.