Comment by lanfeust6

> I love how people keep using the "it was worse during the industrial evolution" argument as a gotcha for every environmental and societal issue

Maybe you think I'm saying something I'm not.

> They had 0 smog and 0 pollution before all these innovations

That's not true. Man-made ecological disasters go back a long ways, but they did not scale up as much until the population growth exploded following the invention of ammonia and the industrial revolution. Until then, 80% of people worked the land. If you understand the reasons behind the deadly plagues that decimated numbers in middle-age Europe, it was clearly not pollution-free.

With technological progress, and policy, total emissions are falling in developed countries despite growing population. They were still growing rapidly in China until recent years where fossil fuel use has plateaued.

Now emissions are growing because other East Asian countries are getting rich, e.g. India, Vietnam. Fortunately they are not missing a beat taking advantage of renewables either.