IF ANYWHERE CAN claim to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution it is Coalbrookdale, a pretty village in England’s West Midlands. In 1709 Abraham Darby, a local merchant, leased a foundry and fed the furnace with coking coal, rather than charcoal made from wood. The use of the fossil fuel meant he could make pig iron much more cheaply, and cast it into pots, pans and cauldrons for cooking—the kind of low-cost manufactured goods that would, over the next three centuries, produce an unprecedented rise in living standards across the world.

Darby’s furnace was not just ground zero for the Industrial Revolution. It was also ground zero for global warming. Since the fateful smelting, economic output and greenhouse-gas emissions have risen in tandem. England’s furnaces were joined by coal-powered railways and steam-powered textile mills, all using tools cast from coke-fuelled foundries. Between the middle of the 19th century and the outbreak of the first world war, Britain’s national income per person more than doubled and its carbon emissions increased four-fold. When other countries industrialised, their emissions spiralled, too.