later, in 1633, the Roman Inquisition forced Galileo to renounce all his beliefs and writings supporting the Copernican view.
People are always upset when their long-standing beliefs prove mistaken. When what we thought was a proven world-view turns out to be an illusion, and a totally different paradigm replaces it, we call it a Copernican revolution. Today, a Copernican revolution in the worldview of all people is desperately required.
We need to realize that the earth is not limitless. The polluted and injured earth is trying to tell us that it does have its limits. However, most people seem blind to its agony, and seek comfort by clinging to the illusion that nature is limitless or at least large enough to take care of itself.
To human eyes, this small planet looks huge, indeed almost infinite. With its vast oceans, expansive fields, towering mountains, and broad valleys, the earth seemed infinitely larger and greater than the premodern people who walked through it. Harboring the illusion that the earth was as infinite as the universe, people thoughtlessly kept on damaging it.
Just as the people who believed in the Ptolemaic theory of the universe found it difficult to accept the Copernican theory, we may find it difficult to realize that the earth is not limitless. But we must awaken to this realization, for ignorance of the earth's limitations is one of the major factors contributing to today's environmental crisis.
The Industrial Revolution
Living in a country like Japan, in an age like today when we have ample food, clothing, and housing, we tend to forget the days when humanity was far poorer. Two centuries ago the world was gasping with poverty and hunger, and many people died from diseases even in "advanced" countries. Beginning in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the industrial revolution sought to overcome this poverty, to realize a richer and better life. Mass production—division of labor, interchangeable parts, assembly lines, mechanization, the steam engine—replaced and vastly increased the small output of single artisans. Engineers replaced theoretical scientists in prominence, as their countless improvements in engines of production, power, and transportation led to the acquisition of undreamed-of capital. The century from 1750 to 1850 became known as the century of invention; England invented new machines one after another as if she were the magician of the world.
In 1768 Watt invented the steam engine, which wrought a revolution in the world of power. In the following year a steam-powered loom was invented, so the weaving of cloth was no longer limited to the size and speed of human hands. As a result, the textile industry became England's main industry, and the demand for cotton fiber led to increased colonization of India. As more machines were needed to expand production, the demand for steel naturally grew, leading in turn to the development of metallurgy.
Soon iron smelting and blast furnaces were developed, which required coal, first as fuel and subsequently as an essential ingredient of carbon steel. Higher grades of iron and later steel made possible yet larger machines, and the development of an entire machine-tool industry. The demand for coal increased rapidly, so more and more coal was dug from British and European coal mines.
The demands of industry for raw materials naturally led to improvements in transportation, and the steam engine was soon harnessed in the service of transportation. American John Fitch invented the steamboat in 1786, and military inventors like Robert Fulton became famous for their improvements in the launching of the Clermont on the Hudson River in 1807. But it was not until the steamboat reached England and industrial demand for coal reached America that steamboats revolutionized canal and river traffic. George Stephenson's invention of the steam locomotive in 1815 led quickly to the first railways, the Stockton and Darlington in England in 1825, and the Baltimore and Ohio in America in 1828. For roughly a century, until the popularization of the automobile, rail transportation became the major means of overland passenger as well as freight transportation. These revolutions in industry and transportation laid the groundwork for modern capitalist society.
Coal Pollution
It goes without saying that the prosperity of the so-called advanced or First World countries is based on the industrial revolution. Ever since the industrial revolution, the developed countries have been continually trying to advance their technologies, while the developing world has been trying to emulate them and achieve its own industrialization.
Leaders of industry acquired the machines that made mass production possible, virtually limitless stocks of coal and ores, and the means to transport huge tonnages of raw materials and finished products. Ignoring the deleterious effects of their industries on nature even more than they ignored their effects on the laboring masses, many leaders of industry optimistically opined that industry would turn our world into an affluent paradise. They thoughtlessly built more factories in the cities, laid more railways, and expanded the routes of their steamships. Dark sulfuric fumes from burning coal belched from the chimneys of factories and factory towns, from steamboats and steam locomotives.
This was the beginning of large-scale urban air pollution caused by coal. A pall of smog blackened the skies of London like a dark cloud. People could not even dry their laundry for lack of sunshine. Thousands of city dwellers fell victim to chronic bronchitis, asthma, emphysema, black lung disease, and other respiratory ailments. Diphtheria, cholera, typhoid, and smallpox broke out frequently in the congested and unsanitary industrial cities.
Japanese find it hard to believe that laws of public hygiene and pollution control, enacted only in recent decades in Japan, were already on the books a hundred and fifty years ago in England. However, it is true: the English improved their cities, constructed sewage systems, and passed concrete laws to limit pollution. America too passed regulations against industrial exhausts, and mayors who promised to prevent pollution won in a number of elections. But these laws were not well enforced in either England or America, as the demands for coal increased annually. The concerns of the industrializing countries to overcome poverty outweighed their concerns to conserve the natural environment.
The necessities of adequate nutrition, warm housing, clothing, and the control of contagious diseases by vaccination and hygiene, soon gave way to the more extravagant desires for railway travel across the continents and steamship travel around the earth, as well as for accumulation of luxury goods. Seeing their dreams come true before their eyes, people failed to consider the damage caused by pollution and thought only of how to make their lives yet more convenient and luxurious.
Nature untouched by urbanization was still reminiscent of the age-old struggle for food and warm shelter, of animal and insect-borne diseases and inadequate sanitation. Europeans acquired the conceit that if they could only conquer nature, they could eliminate suffering and disease. Even in the worst days of London smog and Thames River pollution, the earth as a whole was still relatively pristine and beautiful, and nature still functioned to purify itself on a global scale.
The Petroleum Revolution
Europe and America developed economically successful capitalist societies as a result of the industrial revolution. Their quest for new resources and new markets led to European colonization of Asia, Africa, and Australia; and to American expansion to the Pacific, Oceania, and the Philippines. The colonialists brought with them their ideals of mercantilism, capitalism, and industrialism. So the results of the industrial revolution traversed the oceans and spread throughout the world.
Karl Benz built his first internal combustion engine in 1878, producing the first motored tricycles and bicycles in 1885. The internal combustion engine produced more power in a smaller and lighter package than coal-fired steam engines. The twentieth century saw the application of the internal combustion engine to mass-produced motorcars and airplanes. As petroleum-fueled vehicles sold by the millions, petroleum began to replace coal as the world's leading source of energy.
Refined petroleum also appeared to be an efficient fuel for industry, producing more energy
