Global Economic Transformation And Its Effect On Human Health Essay

The bizarre economy that we live in has affected us in many ways than our simple mind can fathom. After World War II there was massive push in innovation. Human were gifted with inventions like the Airplane, color T.V., polyvinyl cups, and precooked dinners. Nevertheless, these “gifts” came at an enormous cost. That cost was pushed onto the environment and people living in that environment. “The Market Economy” by Marge Piercy illustrates the movement in American aimed at bring attention to a global problem as well as an effort to save the planet along with the people living on it.

21st century industrialization has a global impact by creating ecological and societal imbalances stemming from its nature to enervate resources and manual labor. The start of industrialization was a way to implement efficiency into mass production, ultimately creating opportunities for jobs and maximizing profit gains for companies. In today’s world, its toll on the environment and the way it shapes society becomes increasingly apparent and irreversible. Therefore, as society acknowledges these effects, changes have been made to address these issues.

As once said by the Once-ler, from the tale of The Lorax, “Complain all you want, it’s never, ever, ever, ever gonna stop.” This is a strong message of a children’s book but it can impact how every life spends each day. The growing economy is directly linked to industrialization, which is damaging the Earth more and more each day. Industrialization is the rapidly growing spread of business and industries within a region, and can be shown in practically any country on Earth. There are many environmental issues that industrialization has caused but one in particular is our overuse of scarce resources, therefore, nations have responded to this issue by using renewable resources.

Good morning, today I’m presenting to you about the industrial revolution. However, I’m specifically speaking about the industry’s effect on the environment from the years of 1750 to 1901. The question asked was “did the Industrial Revolution make the world a better place?” I’ve researched how the industry in Britain has not been a benefit to the environment. My task is to prove to you that the industrial revolution has not made the world a better place, and in fact, has made it worse off than it initially was.

During the late 19th and all of the 20th century many events took place affecting the current situation our world is facing today.  The broad term, industrialization, refers to the development of goods produced by machinery and the discovery of new energy resources.  Industrialization had many positive and negative effects on the citizens of the world during these two centuries.  The events under industrialization could be said to have fallen victim to the “snowball effect” and been a cause of the situation that our world is facing today.

as a result of industrial decline in profitability. Furthermore, she illustrates how there will be an increase in environmental pollution and damages to the world, and scarcities in resources due to abnormal climate change in relation to the profitability of natural resource industries such as agriculture and so forth.

In this brief paper, we have discussed two elements of industrialization that positively affected American lives and two elements of industrialization that negatively affected American lives. One of these negative elements was the employment of children in the industrial arena. The second negative aspect was that the roots of our environmentally challenged society stemmed from the Industrial Revolution.

Globalization has an enormous effect on our community’s health. In pursuing my bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science with a concentration in Health and Fitness, I consistently witness and research the problems of our town’s well-being. Various aspects of globalization that impact us are mass production of foods, technological advances that make us sedentary, and our cultural backgrounds. With this town ranging from lower income families to middle class, we have a wide variety of health issues. There are many unhealthy, fast-food chains that are easily accessible and convenient to us as a whole. Maria Jerskey’s book, Globalization: A Reader for Writers has some excellent articles than can relate to our community and help us better understand these effects.

The concept of sustainability, on a broader spectrum, is not a matter from the post-industrial society. Simon Dresner gives us an overview of how the bright minds explained the concept of progress, growth and the such, several years before the Industrial revolution. Tracing down the progress back time, the invention of printing press has revolutionized the world and made it easier to spread ideas between nations with no much effort. With constant development in Western science, belief in progress and growth became more obivious and strong.

Paul Hawken addresses the effects of industrialization in the world today. He depicts that the environment is degraded by the economic systems who aimlessly utilizes resources for unintended purposes while at the same time releasing toxic chemicals into the environment. The economic system does not adopt the natural cycle of activities whereby wastes turn out to be food to some microorganisms in the environment. According to Paul Hawken, the economic system has played a negative role in disrupting the natural cycle. In a natural cycle ecosystems, there are no wastes since everything is fully recycled (Bunker and Hawken, 1995). However, a closer look at the other side of the economic ecosystem, things are totally different since everything seems to take an artificial path. If the economic ecosystem mimicked the natural ecosystem, pollution would not be a huge problem as it is currently. Floods and landslides would not be rampant in the world. Just like the ozone layer would have been intact.

While industrialization has been strongly associated with greenhouse gas emissions, it is premature, however, to conclude that economic growth is the independent factor responsible to climate change. Neumayer (1998) contended that there is no sound scientific evidence documenting consequences of economic development on the environmental degradation in the long term (p. 4). There is also no linear association between economic growth and environmental deterioration, as maintained by Ferguson et al. (1996, p. 28) that the existing evidence “cannot be used to justify a view that economic growth (…) will automatically be good or bad for the environment” (cited in Neumayer 1998, p. 16).

In examining the United States economic health, it is important to consider the current account deficits. The question as to whether or not the United States can run the current deficit accounts indefinitely. Looking at the EU and its balance of payments, the question arises again as to whether or not they can maintain the deficits they are experiencing, indefinitely. Globally speaking, the United States does hold a unique position, but does that position allow the country the ability to consistently run the deficits it currently maintains.

The “iron law of wages,” a theory of Malthus, implies that developing technology does not make people rich, because the extra income increases the population; the population grows faster from the positive shock in the income than the technology can develop. Since the land is a marginal return to labor, it decreases as the population increases. The Malthusian trap can be avoided via more sustainable


Many health outcomes such as obesity, average life expectancy, the infant mortality are directly related to the inequality within a society. Poor health and poverty are directly related to each other as the poverty level increases the health outcomes worsens. Inequality causes. We all know that people who live in poorer countries live shorter lives and this is directly related to the inequality. Unequally access to the healthcare, food, housing, education. Job that does not come with stress.

The concept of ‘sustainable development’ is one that has faced heated debates for decades now. A seemingly harmless concept, it raises a lot of questions as to what it really entails and how exactly it can be achieved. But with more than 1.3 billion people living in abject poverty (less than $1.25 a day), and with a reported 22,000 children dying every day as a result of poverty (UNICEF), the debate for Sustainable Development becomes interesting as it questions the extremity of economic growth policies, in the war against poverty. Many note economic growth and development as the only tool for poverty alleviation. Roemer and Gugerty, for example, report that GDP growth of 10% per year is associated with income growth of 10% for the poorest 40% of the population. However, others question the extent to which economic growth should be put above other socio-economic factors. Lele points out that the focus on economic growth has led to important ecological and social sustainability, taking the backseat. He argues that due to strong emphasis on economic growth, not enough attention is paid to social equity, and economic stability within the development discourse.