The Human need to improve, create and innovate started the industrial revolution, which was the beginning of environmental degradation. Young people left the farm to work in the mills and factories of the cities. .
The byproduct of burning fossil fuels led to air pollution. The runoff from manufacturing processes polluted the land, rivers and streams.
The same human need to improve, create, and innovate at the same time works against the degrading of the earth by creating water treatment to clean the water, proper handling and disposal of toxic substances, and smoke stack scrubbers to remove toxic substances from the air. .
Alfred Nobel, one of the greatest chemists known to date, made an amazing discovery of a substance knows as nitroglycerin, an extremely volatile chemical. He then took this horribly un-manageable chemical and converted it into Dynamite, a safer more manageable form. This invention he hope would pave the way for great construction helping to blow holes in mountains in order to run a railroad through it. This held true until human instinct took this wonderful invention and turned it against their fellow man by putting it in a pipe and throwing it at your enemy. Alfred Nobel died an extremely wealthy, but deeply disturbed man that his invention could be put in someone else's hands in order to kill a fellow human being. In his will Nobel created the Nobel Peace Prizes. The Nobel Peace Prizes are given to those who contribute to the common good in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace. The prizes have a large cash award and are given to organizations.
The Atomic Bomb an unreal creating by man with unbelievable power of destruction came from the newfound ability to split an atom. The destructive ability of this innovation in technology is incredible. When dropped on Hiroshima, Japan the land under the explosion was divided into sections of destructiveness.