Welcome to The Environmentalist, your column for understanding the natural world. This edition of the column is about how humanity’s newest revolution, the Green Energy Revolution, mirrors the Industrial Revolution.
Just as fossil fuels reshaped energy in the 18th century, the Renewable Energy Revolution promises to bring a solution to climate change. But are these two revolutions that different? What could this mean to the future of our planet?
Around the 1800s, Europe saw the Industrial Revolution — a time of exponential technological development that transformed rural societies into industrialized and urbanized ones by manufacturing goods in mass quantities with the introduction of machinery in factories. This was made possible thanks to the steam engine, which required coal to function.
Steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more coal, which then led to more steam-powered machines, and therefore more mining, becoming a vicious cycle. The steam engine transformed the world’s infrastructure as we see it today.
Nowadays, the Green Energy Revolution — a movement that started around the late 20th century — looks to replace the usage of fossil fuels such as oil and gas for energy, with renewable sources of energy such as solar, eolic, hydrological, and geothermal sources. The objective is to keep energy “clean” and have a low impact on the environment by lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Data shows that hydro, solar, and wind energies are growing rapidly, representing approximately one-seventh of the world’s primary energy.
This revolution represents humanity’s attempt to rewrite its energy history, with the United Nations (UN) calling renewable energies the “key to a safer, cleaner, and sustainable world.” As nations race to lead today’s economy, clean energies have been turned into policy and geopolitics. But how clean could they possibly be?
The Industrial Revolution took humanity to the next level, but it was the start of climate change that came with heavy human life costs. Across the world, ordinary people absorb the fatal consequences of an energy system that produces profit through dangerous and extractive labour. Today’s Green Energy Revolution aims to undo that painful legacy, but as scholars lead us to reflect that even a green revolution relies on extraction — not of coal, but of lithium and cobalt instead — it mirrors what the green revolution itself seeks to end.
Minerals for solar panels and batteries are mined under unregulated conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, displacing Indigenous communities and the exploitation of cheap labour. The privilege to enjoy those resources and scientific advancements around it are accrued to the privileged in the Global North while many in the Global South are trapped in sacrifice zones in the name of a “clean economy”.
This is a call to reflect how “renewable” is not synonymous with “just.” The test of this century is whether this revolution can learn from the last, not just in technology, but in equity, rights, and dignity. As the Lorax once said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.” So, let’s care.
