The transition from an organic economy powered by plants, animals, and human muscle to a mineral economy powered by coal — which produced modern urbanism, the working class, industrial warfare, the end of Malthusian population limits, and the carbon emissions now reshaping the planet's climate
For all of human history before roughly 1750, economic growth was ultimately constrained by the amount of sunlight falling on a given area of land. Food, fuel, and fiber all came from plants and animals; the energy budget was biological. The Industrial Revolution broke that constraint by mining concentrated solar energy stored as coal underground. The consequences — unprecedented population growth, urbanization, industrial warfare, mass politics, global empire, and atmospheric carbon accumulation — are still unfolding.