Environment and sustainability

This panel has been created by the Program Committee so does not need a rationale.

Brian Balogh's Not in My Backyard: How Citizen Activists Nationalized Local Politics in the Fight to Save Green Springs (Yale, 2024) tells the story of the decades-long fight for environmental conservation in Green Springs, Virginia. This book illuminates the economic tradeoffs of protecting the environment, the origins of NIMBYism, the changing nature of local control, and the surprising power of history to advance public policy.

This panel explores the intersection of green policies, sustainability, and the automobile industry, focusing on the experiences of global powerhouses such as China, the United States, and Europe in navigating the energy transition through a historical lens. By examining the role of industrial policy, corporate strategy, and regional innovation, the panel provides a comprehensive view of how different national contexts shape the global shift toward sustainability, emphasizing the importance of long-term government planning.

Climate change is widely recognized as one of the most significant global challenges of our time, affecting not only academic discourse, but also policy makers, businesses, and society at large. However, despite its far-reaching implications, business historians have, for the most part, only touched upon the topic of climate change in their research. Since the 2000s their focus has largely remained on broader environmental and sustainability concerns (Rosen and Sellers, 1999; Rosen, 2007; Berghoff and Rome, 2017; Jones,2017, 2018, 2023; Bergquist, 2019a, 2019b).

This panel has been created by the Program Committee so does not need a rationale.