Fire and industrialization

The subterranean forest

Just as human history over the past 10,000 years has been the history of the agrarianization of the world, the history over the past 250 years has been the history of industrialization.

The term ‘industrialization' refers to the rise and spread of a new socio- ecological regime - the industrial regime, following the fire regime and the agrarian regime. It did not put an end to the older regimes. On the contrary, new applications of fire lay at the very core of industrialization: using fossil fuel to generate steam power and to smelt and refine iron. The smokestacks of the coal and iron industries and the red glow of furnaces at night became the icons of early industrialization.

There were also close connections with agriculture. Agrarian production had to provide a subsistence base for all workers employed in the mines and factories. Moreover, as soon as industrialization came to include the produc­tion of textiles and foodstuffs, the raw materials had to be supplied by farming. In return, factories started generating means of production for agriculture: first simple iron tools, then more complex new mechanized implements, and then, in the twentieth century, various types of combustion-driven machines and factory-made fertilizers and pesticides. By the end of that century, agriculture and industry in many parts of the world had become inseparable and often even barely distinguishable parts of an ‘agro-industrial complex' that leaned heavily on the use of fossil fuels.

The primary effect of industrialization was to make immense supplies of fossil energy available that had lain virtually unused by any living species. In the eighteenth century, a series of inventions (in other words, innovations in the field of information) opened the possibility of tapping these supplies and using them to generate heat and mechanical motion.

Seen from a world historical perspective, these developments concerned humanity at large. But at closer quarters it was only a tiny section of humanity that took the lead and was the first to profit. A small entrepreneurial class in Britain had the advantage of being the pioneers of industrialization.

Industrialization started with single steam-powered factories - often called ‘mills' like their predecessors which were driven by wind or water - standing apart in the agrarian landscape, and forming, as suggested by the environ­mental historian Rolf Peter Sieferle, ‘industrial archipelagos'.^[277] But from the very start, these ‘islands' were enveloped in a much wider context. Industri­alization was preceded by European overseas expansion, which gave a strong impetus to the process. British society in the eighteenth century was con­nected in many ways to a larger world: not just to the European continent but also to other continents. It had a strong navy and a large commercial fleet; trade with other continents (including the slave trade) brought in considerable wealth, while emigration across the Atlantic helped to relieve population pressures. The ensemble of these military, political, and eco­nomic relationships provided a robust infrastructure for the burgeoning

industries, guaranteeing protected access to a worldwide array of resources and markets.

The basis of industrialization was, literally, coal. As a fuel, coal had been used before, in ancient China and in medieval England, but that was always coal found at or near the surface of the earth, and its burning qualities were generally considered inferior to those of wood. Better coal was practically impossible to mine because it lay too deep, and the galleries dug to reach it were always in danger of being flooded by groundwater.

When people began exploiting the enormous stores of solar energy contained in coal, they entered, in Sicfcrlc's telling image, a ‘subterranean forest' of huge dimensions that, in many decades to come, turned out to be even more abundant than originally expected. Compared to the somatic energy of humans and their domesticated animals, the amount of energy now available for manufacturing and traction, whether measured in units of horse power, kilowatts, calories, or megajoules, was tremendous (see Table 8.ι).^[278]

The ‘energy bonanza' has resulted in unprecedented technological devel­opment and economic growth. Although these processes affect the entire world population, the benefits are not equally shared by all; thus, as Weis- senbacher notes, some 2.5 billion people still depend on traditional biomass as their main fuel for cooking.^[279] Fire also continues to show its Janus face: its destructive power is used for highly diverse productive applications, but also for deliberate destruction in war.

Table 8.ι Global estimates of population (in millions) and energy use (GJ/capita)