Plastics!

What other substance has changed the world so dramatically and so rapidly?

Lightweight, versatile, inexpensive, and durable, plastics are everywhere today—packaging our food, providing sterile tools for healthcare—and it’s in everything from toys to car parts to the International Space Station.

Given how embedded they are in modern life, it might surprise you to learn that plastics are relatively new—very new, in the context of human history. Made from chemicals, specifically fossil fuels, the first plastics were invented in 1907, although they didn’t see widespread use until the Second World War, when military purposes like aircraft parts and parachutes ushered us into the plastic age. Today, over 400 million metric tons of plastic are produced every year.

Because it degrades very slowly, the plastic we make will continue to impact our environment for a long time. In fact, almost all the plastic ever made is still around. Some of it still serves the uses for which it was made 20, 30, or 40 years ago. And some of it has been recycled into new products. Unfortunately, lots of plastic is discarded and broken down into little bits—microplastics—where it enters the food chain and sometimes finds its way into our bodies. Recently, scientists are discovering the effects of microplastics on our health, and initial findings are that it is toxic, that it causes inflammation, disrupts the health of our digestive system, and might even make it harder for us to have children.

Plastics highlight the conundrum of technological innovation that’s existed since the beginning of the twentieth century. Clearly, technological innovation has led to significant advances. Human societies today have more efficiency, offer more comfort, and are generally safer and more secure than they were in 1900. But these benefits don’t apply to everyone equally, and all of them come with some unintended consequences. Was it all worth it? And more important, what lessons for the future can we learn from the benefits and costs of these innovations of the twentieth century?

Let’s explore some important examples that might help us answer these questions. First, we’ll look at some of the technological advances that led to great changes and their positive impacts. Then, we’ll evaluate some of the costs.

Energy

Our assessment has to start with energy. Pretty much everything we do requires some sort of power. Our ancient human ancestors relied on their own muscles to do their work. Later, animals, wind, gravity (like falling water), and other technologies were added. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we learned to burn coal and other fuels to drive steam engines and factories.

Between 1900 and 2000, a lot of new energy technologies emerged. Probably the most important were petroleum and nuclear power. Petroleum is drawn from the Earth, and its use expanded rapidly in the early twentieth century as cars, airplanes, and factories became more common. Unlike earlier fuels like coal and wood, petroleum is easier to transport and produces more energy. This made it ideal for powering machines, vehicles, and large-scale industries, leading to faster production and more goods for consumers. During and after World War II, oil helped fuel mass production of cars, household appliances, and chemicals, making everyday life more comfortable and efficient for many people around the world. Plus, it could also be made into plastic!

In the second half of the twentieth century, nuclear power emerged as another powerful energy source. First developed for use in weapons in the 1940s, nuclear energy became useful for civilian electricity production in industrialized societies starting in the 1950s. Nuclear power could provide large amounts of electricity with very little fuel, which made it especially valuable in countries with limited fossil fuel resources. Soon, it helped meet the growing demand for electricity in cities, factories, and homes. Because it doesn’t release smoke or carbon dioxide, nuclear energy is also seen as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil. By the end of the twentieth century, nuclear energy played an important role in powering industrialized societies.

Petroleum and nuclear power, alongside other fuels like liquified natural gases and methane, helped raise productivity and improve living standards. These energy sources made possible the growth of global trade, the spread of consumer culture, and the development of new technologies. Alternative energy sources—like windmills and even solar power—remained or became available as well, but in the twentieth century, they were often ignored or seen as less important than the fuels that represented modernity.

Communication and transportation

Can you imagine trying to stay in touch with friends and families as if it were the year 1900? Without the internet, telephones, air travel, or easy access to automobiles, you would no doubt find yourself limited to a much smaller world of information and people than you’re used to.

All of the great advances in communications that drive our society today emerged after 1900. It was only at the beginning of that century that radio communication made it possible to send news, music, and information wirelessly over long distances, even across oceans. But for most people, radio was only about listening, not talking back. Real two-way communication required the telephone, which had been invented in 1877 but was out of reach to most of the world’s population until well into the twentieth century. It took the invention of the rotary telephone and automatic exchanges in the 1920s to give people—even those in big, industrial cities—the ability to talk on the phone very often. And of course, the modern cell phone only began to appear in the 1970s and 1980s, and wasn’t widespread until the very end of the twentieth century. Even then, cell phones only allowed users to call or text until cell phones were combined with another innovation—the internet. First developed as a government and military tool in the late 1960s, the internet became widely used in some societies by the 1990s, transforming how people shared information, did business, and stayed in touch.

During the same period, transportation technologies changed the way people and goods moved around the world. Automobiles had been invented before 1900, but they were expensive, inefficient, and rare. Only over time did cars, trucks, and buses become cheap and reliable enough to be widely adopted. Air travel, which became more common for civilians in the 1950s and 1960s, made it possible to cross continents in hours instead of weeks. The introduction of the shipping container in the 1950s revolutionized global trade by making it faster and cheaper to load and transport goods on ships, trains, and trucks. Together, these new technologies reduced the time and cost of moving people and products, helping to connect economies. By reducing the barrier of geographic distance in both everyday life and global interactions, they sped up globalization—changing not only the way we did business, but also our cultural ideals and ways of relating to each other.

Reproduction

Although the new technologies that increased travel and communication had some major consequences, they weren’t the only drivers leading to big social changes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Other new technologies have given people more control over the shape and size of their families and have even changed how societies view romance and fertility.

One important category of medical technology is birth control. New forms of birth control have given women in particular greater control over their bodies and their futures. Probably the most significant of these is the birth control pill, which became widely available in the 1960s. For the first time in history, women in some societies could get access to a reliable and private way to prevent pregnancy. This gave them more freedom to decide when—or if—they wanted to have children. It also allowed more women to finish school, join the workforce, and plan their families in ways that had not been possible before. In addition to the pill, other methods like intrauterine devices (IUDs), condoms, and sterilization procedures became safer, more effective, and more available during the twentieth century. As a result, fertility rates declined in many countries during the second half of the century, reshaping demographics as the median age of many wealthy, industrialized nations grew older. While some people have seen this as a problem, the fact is that the new technologies have given many people—especially women—the power to shape their own futures.

Agriculture and medicine

Even as fertility rates began to decline in some countries, the world’s total population continued to increase throughout the twentieth century. This population growth was mostly due to better health and lower death rates. Especially after about 1930, major medical innovations like vaccines and antibiotics greatly increased the ability of humans to survive diseases and live longer, healthier lives. Vaccines helped prevent deadly illnesses such as smallpox, polio, and measles. In fact, smallpox was completely eliminated by 1980 thanks to global vaccination efforts.

The discovery of antibiotics—especially penicillin in the 1940s—allowed doctors to cure infections that once killed millions, such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and strep throat. These medical breakthroughs helped reduce child mortality, improve public health, and extend life expectancy around the world. As a result, populations grew, and more people were able to live full, productive lives.

Of course, all of those people needed to eat. Fortunately, new farming technologies were being developed to help feed a rapidly growing global population. Starting in the 1940s and spreading widely by the 1960s and ‘70s, scientists developed high-yield crops, such as new types of wheat and rice, that produced more food per acre. These were combined with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and improved irrigation systems, especially in countries like India and Mexico. The resulting increases in agricultural productivity were sometimes called the Green Revolution, and they made it possible to support billions of people and reduce food shortages.

Limitations and costs

This all sounds great, right? But you know things are more complicated. After all, you’re living with the direct legacy of all these new technologies.

Let’s discuss some of the limitations of all this innovation.

First, although the twentieth century saw incredible technological progress, not everyone benefited equally from these changes. Access to medical innovations like antibiotics and vaccines improved health and life expectancy in many parts of the world, but low-income countries often lacked the infrastructure to distribute these treatments widely. Similarly, the Green Revolution increased food production in places like India and Mexico, but some regions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, were left behind due to poor funding, weak governments, or unsuitable growing conditions. Here’s another example: Even as birth-control technologies gave many women greater control over their reproductive lives, social and legal barriers in some countries limited access, especially for poor or rural populations.

New technologies also brought unintended environmental and health consequences. The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides during the Green Revolution may have boosted crop yields, but it also polluted soil and water. Petroleum-based transportation increased global mobility and trade, but also led to air pollution and rising greenhouse gas emissions—which has directly contributed to global climate change. Nuclear energy avoided these problems. It’s efficient and low in carbon emissions. But it does produce radioactive waste and poses serious risks. More important, it led to several big disasters, such as the explosion and its aftermath at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. Meanwhile, the widespread use of plastics, pharmaceuticals, and fossil fuels has created long-term environmental and health problems that scientists and governments are still trying to understand and solve.

But there have also been more subtle implications of all this technological change. As societies have embraced these innovations, they’ve became more dependent on complex technologies, creating new kinds of vulnerability. Modern communication systems like cell phones and the internet have made life more connected. But they have also led to problems like misinformation, surveillance, and digital addiction. In transportation, people and goods move more quickly than ever before, but these systems require massive energy inputs and global networks, both of which can be disrupted by war, cyberattacks, or natural disasters.

Finally, rapid innovation has raised important ethical and social questions. Birth control gave women more freedom, but has also sparked political and religious debates. Advances in medicine—from vaccines to organ transplants—have saved lives, but they’ve also raised issues about access, consent, and experimentation. Even agriculture became ethically complex in the twentieth century, as new types of crops and preservatives stirred controversy over food safety, biodiversity, and corporate control. In all these cases, technological change has brought progress and challenges that societies continue to debate and address.

Conclusion

So, how can we evaluate this story of technological progress? That’s the kind of work that citizens—you—need to do. The question isn’t only whether technologies of the recent past have been positive or negative, but also who they’ve helped and who they’ve harmed. And these questions are important not only to evaluate the past, but also to think about the future. We’re in an age of increasing technological change. What will be the implications of the technologies emerging today, such as AI and gene editing? Should we adopt them? Who should control them? How should they be monitored and evaluated? Perhaps these are the questions we should have been asking about plastic in the 1950s. Maybe we still would have adopted it widely—plastic is wonderfully useful stuff. But perhaps we might have also thought carefully about how widespread its use should be, and determined how to dispose of it safely. These are the kinds of careful considerations that new technologies deserve.