Modern Environmental Movement Research Articles

Business Sustainability, Social Enablement, ESG, and Ethics: A Systematic Biliometric Review

Objective: This study uses a bibliometric analysis of articles on sustainability dimensions in various ways to illustrate the current trends in business sustainability literature. Theoretical Framework: The concept of business sustainability has undergone significant development over time. Since the inception of the modern environmental movement and the implementation of environmental regulations during the 1970s, it has evolved into a strategic concern propelled by market forces. Method: The study was centred on mapping of keywords, an analysis of bibliometric authors' citations, an analysis of bibliometric papers' citations, an analysis of co-citations in bibliometric references, a cartography of co-citations in journals, and an analysis of qualitative content. The data has been extracted from a dimensional database that covers a wide range of data. It was extracted from 2012 to 2023 and examined using bibliometric analytical tools. Results and Discussion: A total of 318 sustainability-related articles were examined. VOSviewer was used to conduct the bibliometric study. There were determined to be six primary clusters: Business Sustainability, Social Enablement, Environment Social Governance (ESG), The People Profit Planet, Corporate Sustainability, Economic Value, and Ethics. Based on the findings, a search was conducted on the keyword "business sustainability" in a bibliometric analysis of a database comprising 318 documents. Out of these, 112 were articles, 85 were book chapters, 46 were preprint publications, 55 were proceedings, and the remaining 20 were edited books. Conclusion: Additionally, the findings show that the fields of social enablement, environmental sustainability governance (ESG), people-profit-planet (PPP), and corporate sustainability have seen a considerable increase in the number of research publications and citations, showing their significant contributions to the field of business sustainability study.

An Ecological Discourse Analysis of Silent Spring from the Perspective of Corpus-based Attitude System: Human Image as an Example

The book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, a famous contemporary American marine biologist, has prompted environmental issues to become the biggest theme of our time and triggered the rise of the modern environmental movement. In this paper, Two corpus tools are used to analyze the attitude resources related to the human characters in Silent Spring from an ecological linguistic perspective of the attitude system. The study finds that the farmers and workers portrayed in the book are both destroyers and victims of ecology, while the scientists and ecologists play the role of protectors and managers of ecology. The article rejects the previous notion of "an thropocentrism" and reveals that the author advocates an ecological view of nature in which "all things are equal and interdependent", with a view to awakening the ecological consciousness of human beings and then taking the initiative to care for nature and protect the earth.

Palisades: The People's Park, 20th Anniversary Edition by Robert O. Binnewies

Reviewed by: Palisades: The People's Park, 20th Anniversary Edition by Robert O. Binnewies Jackie Gonzales, PhD (bio) Palisades: The People's Park, 20th Anniversary Edition By Robert O. Binnewies. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021. 424 pages, 6" × 9", 30 b&w illus. $150.00 cloth, $43.95 paperback, $38.99 e-book. Fordham University Press has republished Robert O. Binnewies's comprehensive history of the many varied parks and natural areas that comprise the Palisades Interstate Parks near the New York–New Jersey border. The Palisades Interstate Parks and its governing body, the Palisades Interstate Parks Commission (PIPC), are unique and creative land management entities that have had international influence on land conservation. In the early chapters, Binnewies tells the stories of the Rockefellers, the Harrimans, the Perkinses, and others with roles in preserving this land—a "who's who" of wealthy American families with conservationist legacies. Binnewies makes a strong case that the preservation of these natural areas, so close to New York City, influenced conservation strategies of the National Park Service. Binnewies tasks himself with telling the whole story of these many parks: what [End Page 391] was there before they were parks, how they were made into parks, and how they were managed. This is a lot to bite off in one book. Because of that, the narrative is sometimes disjointed, and some chapters can be difficult to follow. There are just so many actors and Binnewies packs in so much information that the chronology can be confusing. For instance, he jumps from nineteenth-century preservation efforts to seventeenth-century background on the Revolutionary War, and then back to the twentieth-century preservation of Nyack Beach (all in a chapter titled "Welch," a man he does not introduce until the second-to-last page of that chapter). This account is ultimately an insiders' account, since Binnewies led PIPC for many years. Binnewies is not a historian, which is evident when he makes big claims (for example, that the Storm King controversy was the foundation for modern environmental movement, and that PIPC parks set the precedent for the National Park Service) but fails to cite any secondary sources to contextualize his points. But because Binnewies was an insider and the people who fought to protect these lands were some of the richest in New York City and the world, his account shines when he talks about the insider deals from the era when he was personally present. The "Minnewaska" and "Sterling Forest" chapters are especially good. These chapters can stand alone as case studies for historians of land management or for environmentalists thinking through how best to creatively protect land through partnerships. The new edition lacks some of the illustrations of the first, but it has some textual updates. The most significant addition is a new chapter, "Honor and Electronics," about the creation of the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor in New Windsor, New York, and the fight against the LG towers in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. When he wraps up the conclusion of the LG controversy, Binnewies wants to spin it like a victory, as PIPC did, and which follows the storyline of so much of PIPC's legacy. But in reading the paragraph on page 347 that discusses the resulting low-lying building and how employees can enjoy nature from it, I could not help but feel like he was employing the same rhetoric as that used by the Sterling Forest Corporation and against which the PIPC fought a hard battle. How much more ecosystem was disrupted to make way for this long, flat building, and was it more than would have been damaged if the towers had been built instead? This conflict ultimately gets to the question of what matters more: viewshed protection or ecosystem protection? But Binnewies does not really grapple with that issue. Would ending with a critical look at the outcome be a more effective call to action than pretending a huge office park built in a forest was a win for conservation and the environment? That said, PIPC is a unique, interstate, quasi-governmental entity that has had many successes. In an era of environmental catastrophe, we need...

Late Cenozoic deepening of Yosemite Valley, USA

Although Yosemite Valley, USA, catalyzed the modern environmental movement and fueled foundational debates in geomorphology, a century of investigation has failed to definitively determine when it formed. The non-depositional nature of the landscape and homogeneous bedrock have prevented direct geological assessments. Indirect assumptions about the age of downcutting have ranged from pre-Eocene to Pleistocene. Clarity on this issue would not only satisfy public interest but also provide a new constraint for contentious debates about the Cenozoic tectonic and geomorphologic history of the Sierra Nevada in California. Here we use thermochronometric analysis of radiogenic helium in apatite crystals, coupled with numerical models of crustal temperatures beneath evolving topography, to demonstrate significant late Cenozoic deepening of Tenaya Canyon, Yosemite’s northeastern branch. Approximately 40%−90% of the current relief has developed since 10 Ma and most likely since 5 Ma. This coincides with renewed regional tectonism, which is a long-hypothesized but much debated driver of Sierran canyon development. Pleistocene glaciation caused spatially variable incision and valley widening in Yosemite Valley, whereas little contemporaneous erosion occurred in the adjacent upper Tuolumne watershed. Such variations probably arise from glacial erosion’s dependence on opographic focusing of ice discharge into zones of rapid flow, and on the abundance of pre-existing fractures in the substrate. All available data, including those from our study, are consistent with a moderately high and slowly eroding mid-Cenozoic Sierra Nevada followed by significant late Cenozoic incision of some, but not all, west-side canyons. A likely driver of this event was range-crest uplift accompanied by fault-induced beheading of some major drainages, although other mechanisms such as drainage reorganization following volcanic deposition are plausible.

Sustainable Polymers: Our Evolving Understanding.

This Account discusses the evolution of our strategy to conduct environmentally responsible research in the field of polymer chemistry. To contextualize our work, we begin with a broad historical overview of the modern environmental movement, the rise of sustainability as a concept, and how chemistry has responded to these forces, which were often sharply critical of our field. We then trace our own responses, from graduate school onward, chronicling a series of experiences and research projects that molded, challenged, and reshaped how we think about sustainability in polymer science.Since beginning our independent careers in 2004, we have recognized and worked to resolve the tension between designing synthetic polymers for specific desired thermomechanical properties and minimizing environmental impact. In our early years, we were most strongly guided by the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry (12PGC), which had only recently been proposed. The authors' early research agendas had a rather narrow focus on two areas, specifically catalysis and biobased monomers, which we saw as strongly linked to sustainability. Over time, we found these areas to be too narrow in their focus, ignoring important considerations such as the capacity of monomer supply to support scale-up and the impact polymers have at the end of their usage lifetimes. With respect to monomers and catalysts, we consider descriptive metrics that quantify waste production and the toxicity of compounds used during synthesis. In terms of polymer end-of-life, we discuss hydrophobicity as a tool to help understand susceptibility to degradation in the environment as well as some of the concerns with design for degradation, a critical component of 12PGC.Now, after nearly two decades of investigation, we believe that achieving sustainability in polymer science will require us to move beyond the qualitative use of the 12PGC to a portfolio of metrics. We note a heartening increase in the availability and use of such metrics and tools across the field. These include items that provide limited insight but are relatively trivial to integrate into existing workflows such as E factor or the Toxicity Estimation Software Tool. We also appreciate the increased use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is both dramatically more thorough and difficult to deploy. Finally, we propose the creation of a national LCA center, similar to instrumental core facilities. Such a resource would enable the use of this tool across multiple phases of research and we hope would more effectively guide us to a sustainable future.

Is it possible to create a favorable impression of greenness on skin care websites?

ABSTRACT Parallel to the upswing in the modern environmental movement, 5companies and brands have emphasized green attributes and imagery to sell qualities of the natural world. However, consumers have become highly skeptical about green messaging and express distrust toward companies and brands claiming to be green. The web has thus emerged as an effective platform for a company or brand to promote their environmental responsibility. The present study explores this further by taking a qualitative case study approach that deconstructs how three popular skin care brands impress consumers that a brand is green and communicates caring for the environment. The findings show that each brand established a green identity with visuals, color, and text signifying eco-friendly and caring for the environment as part of its web-based communication. However, the analysis discovered noticeable differences in what brands say they do with what they do in which brands aim to lessen their environmental impact.

The Public Trust and the Chicago Lakefront: Review of Kearney & Merrill’s Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago (Cornell U. Press, 2021)

Joseph Kearney and Thomas Merrill’s brilliantly illustrated LAKEFRONT is sure to win American legal history awards for its riveting history of the machinations behind the preservation of the magnificent Chicago lakefront, now dominated by public spaces. The authors weave together a compelling account of how the law affected the development of the post-fire Chicago in the late 19th and 20th centuries—largely made by lawyers and courts and only ratified by legislatures. The book’s title suggests that the story is largely about the public trust doctrine (PTD). But the doctrine is hardly the centerpiece of the authors’ story. What they have to say about the doctrine is confined to the Illinois version of the PTD, and they do not endeavor to explain where it deviates from the modern direction of the PTD. The book’s history of Chicago and its lakefront is groundbreaking legal history, buttressed by twenty years of exhaustive research, colorful characters, and interesting legal developments, of which the PTD played only a supporting role until the 1970s. The principal lesson of their story, one the authors do not emphasize enough, is a persistent struggle between public and private rights along the lakefront. What is unusual is how long this struggle endured, beginning with Illinois Central Railroad’s dominance in the late 19th century and the so-called “Lake Front Steal” of 1869, in which the Illinois legislature conveyed roughly one thousand acres of submerged Lake Michigan land to the railroad. The legislature soon thought better of the giveaway, and its rescission in 1873 culminated in a famous 1892 Supreme Court decision on the PTD, Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois, pronounced as the lodestar case of the doctrine by Professor Joe Sax a half-century ago. The authors discuss the controversy over the lakebed conveyance and the Court’s pathbreaking decision, but they view the effect of the PTD on the Chicago lakefront as less significant than other considerations like the public dedication doctrine, which nearby landowners invoked to restrict development of the lakefront and preserve their views of the lake. Still, the Illinois Central Court focused public attention on what was an attempt to create a monopoly of the lake’s outer harbor, and that attention has persisted for a century-and-a-quarter following the Court’s decision. Today, the Chicago lakefront is largely public, the consequence of several factors that LAKEFRONT explains. This struggle between public and private rights over the Chicago lakefront existed long before the dawn of the modern environmental movement a half-century ago, influenced not only by the Court’s surprising 1892 decision but also by the persistent oversight of neighboring landowners protecting their views of the lake. This public-private clash, in which private rights were subject to both public and neighboring landowner challenges, created the glorious Chicago waterfront of today. This review of the Kearney and Merrill book focuses on the public trust doctrine, as articulated in the Lake Front case that culminated in the Illinois Central Court’s decision. There is more to the book, mostly centering on local Chicago interest, so this review concentrates on the public trust. Though in the book’s title, the authors maintain that the PTD was not as central to the story of the lakefront’s preservation as other influences. They remain public trust skeptics.

Glyphosate regulation and sovereignty politics around the world

Bayer's best‐selling herbicide, glyphosate, is a once in a generation product. This pesticide has come to symbolize widespread opposition to corporate influence over agrochemical regulation and led to calls for greater democratic accountability in science. In the 1960s, the modern environmental movement was born from campaigns against the insecticide DDT. In the 2010s, glyphosate is helping to foster new coalitions between environmentalists and nationalist groups calling for chemical sovereignty. This guest editorial describes how glyphosate has helped shape these movements in postwar Sri Lanka and the European Union before and after Brexit.

Carson’s Can of Worms: Grotesque Satire and Abjection in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was a watershed moment for the modern environmental movement, and it is now a foundational twentieth-century environmental literature text. While Silent Spring had a good deal of success in galvanizing 1960s readers against DDT, some of Carson’s rhetoric now reads as moralistic and proselytizing. Current scholars criticize these modes of language, prolific in environmental writing, as alienating or overwhelming to prospective environmentalists seeking to understand the realities of global environmental crises.1 Carson’s earnest tone in Silent Spring is well documented, yet she uses a diverse range of tactics, and her use of satirical strategies—those of irony, irreverence, abjection, and grotesque imagery—remains less considered. I suggest these satirical portions of Carson’s text fit into an archive of what Nicole Seymour identifies as “bad environmentalisms.” Seymour defines “bad environmentalism” as “environmental thought that employs dissident, often-denigrated affects and sensibilities to reflect critically on both...

Conquering the Barriers Between Nature and Man

ABSTRACT This 2020 History Day paper describes how Rachel Carson conquered the barrier between chemical companies and Americans and started the modern environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring.

The Paradoxical Malthusian. A Promethean Perspective on Vaclav Smil’s Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities (MIT Press, 2019) and Energy and Civilization: A History (MIT Press, 2017)

Prolific energy writer Vaclav Smil’s “Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities” (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2019) is marketed as the most comprehensive study of the modalities of growth in Earth’s life systems in their many natural, social, and technological forms. While the book reflects Smil’s strength as a polymath, it also brings into focus his Malthusian outlook. Smil’s Malthusianism is puzzling in light of much empirical evidence to the contrary and of his own detailed histories of human technological achievements, including his recent massive synthesis “Energy and Civilization: A History” (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2017). In keeping with Smil’s historical emphasis, in this review essay, the Malthusian assumptions, assertions, and conclusions of these books are challenged through the Promethean insights of numerous writers whose output long predates the modern environmental movement and can thus avoid charges of “greenwashing”. I make a case that, in the context of market economies (i.e., competition, price system, and private property rights), humans’ unique propensity to trade physical goods and to (re)combine things in new ways have long delivered both improved standards of living and environmental remediation. I further suggest that it is not the volume of materials handled, but rather how they are handled that determines the impact of economic growth on the biosphere. While Professor Smil is fond of saying that “numbers don’t lie”, his work illustrates that they are sometimes made to tell an unduly pessimistic story through the intellectual filters created by an author’s assumptions and value judgements.

The Public Trust Doctrine Fifty Years after Sax and Some Thoughts on its Future

The public trust doctrine was resurrected by Professor Joe Sax in a famous article a half-century ago. Sax explored the doctrine's history and maintained that it had contemporary significance at the time of the dawn of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Sax thought that the historic use of the doctrine to prevent monopoly use of important waterways could be expanded to meet the felt necessities of the times by protecting important natural resources from unwise or unsustainable depletion for public use, including use by future generations. Sax's vision ignited a substantial expansion in the scope and purposes of the doctrine over the past 50 years. Some of the most surprising developments have occurred internationally, which Sax's article did not expressly anticipate. This analysis, written on the 50th anniversary of Sax's article, examines the public trust doctrine both before and after the article, revealing the considerable effect it has had on courts and legislatures. In addition to suggesting the great debt public trust scholars and the public at large owe to Sax's prescience, the article hazards some predictions about the likely evolution of the doctrine in the future.

Earth 2020: Science, society, and sustainability in the Anthropocene

April 22, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the birth of the modern environmental movement. As we look back over the past half century, we can gain significant insights into the evolving human imprint on Earth’s biophysical systems, and the role of science and scientists in driving societal transitions toward greater sustainability. Science is a foundation for such transitions, but it is not enough. Rather, it is through wide collaborations across fields, including law, economics, and politics, and through direct engagement with civil society, that science can illuminate a better path forward. This is illustrated through a number of case studies highlighting the role of scientists in leading positive societal change, often in the face of strong oppositional forces. The past five decades reveal significant triumphs of environmental protection, but also notable failures, which have led to the continuing deterioration of Earth’s natural systems. Today, more than ever, these historical lessons loom large as we face increasingly complex and pernicious environmental problems.

The Saving Grace of America’s Green Jeremiad

By the late seventeenth century, Puritan leaders in colonial America were bemoaning what they perceived to be the betrayal of New England’s godly “errand into the wilderness.” In election sermons they mourned the community’s backsliding from its global mission as a “city upon a hill.” Such doomsday rhetoric echoed the lamentations of decline intoned by ancient Hebrew prophets such as Jeremiah. Yet this “Jeremiad” discourse characteristically reached beyond effusions of doom and gloom toward prospects of renewal through a conversion of heart. It blended warnings of impending catastrophe with hope for recovery if the erring souls it addressed chose to repent. This twofold identity of the Puritan Jeremiad, gradually refashioned into the American Jeremiad, has long resonated within and beyond this nation’s literary culture. Featured in creative nonfiction, jeremiad expression surfaces in various forms. And with rise of the modern environmental movement, a prophetic subspecies identifiable as “Green Jeremiad” has lately emerged. The essay reflects on how, especially in an Anthropocene era, Green Jeremiads dramatize the crisis of spirit and faith that undergird challenges to earth’s geophysical health and survival. What saving graces might temper the chilling reminders of imminent peril composed by authors such as Rachel Carson, Bill McKibben, Barbara Kingsolver, and Elizabeth Kolbert?

Representation of Environmental Damage in The Novel Pukat and Eliana By Tere Liye

Based on the problems in the novel Pukat and Eliana by Tere Liye, it is necessary to do an analysis that discusses the representation of environmental damage in literary works using ecocritical studies. The selection of studies on the representation of environmental damage in literary works as a focus of research has the following reasons: (1) the reflective representation in the novel Pukat and Eliana by Tere Liye is a real-life description of the problems of the characters in the novel with nature and the surrounding environment. The setting used in the story is the forest in Sumatra; (2) the next ecological problem is intentional representation which is a description of the factors that cause damage to the environment in Sumatra; (3) the constructional representation contained in Tere Liye's Pukat and Eliana novel is an impact that occurs as a result of human activity itself. In research with the object of these two novels using qualitative research. This qualitative research as a research step that produces descriptive data in the form of written words of the object being analyzed. The approach in this analysis is an eco-critic approach because this analysis can be used for research on the representation of environmental damage in literary works. Data collection techniques are basically gathering facts related to research problems. Based on research data sources in the form of texts namely novels titled Trawl and novels titled Eliana by Tere Liye the collection of data of this study uses the techniques of listening and documentation study techniques. Ecocriticism studies the ways in which we describe the relationship between humans and their environment. Ecocriticism is also influenced by modern environmental movements. Greg Garrard explored the development of the modern environmental movement and studied several concepts related to eco-criticism, including: (a) pollution, (b) wilderness, (c) apocalypse, (d) housing/dwelling, (e) animals, and (f) earth. Literature itself grows from the environment of society and the natural environment (ecology), which has a function as a medium of representation, views/reflections on the reality of literature which has an important role in changing social values, shared life values and values of local wisdom.

Current Human Ecology in the Amazon and beyond: a Multi-Scale Ecosemiotic Approach

Umwelt theory is an expression of von Uexküll’s subjective biology and as such usually applied in analysis of individual animals, yet it is fundamentally relational and therefore also suitable for analysis of more complex wholes. Since the birth of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s, there has been growing scientific and political acknowledgement of there being a global environmental crisis, which today manifests itself as a climate change and biodiversity crisis. This calls for a multi-scale ecosemiotic approach to analysis of human ecology at various levels and scales. In this article I explore to what extent ecosemiotic methodology, drawing on Umwelt theory and its consistently subjective perspective, can be applied in analysis of human ecology at different geographical and ecological scales ranging from the global to the local. The article incorporates a case study of human–animal relations in Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve in the Central Amazon. This is a seasonal floodplain forest area surrounded by rivers. I investigate aspects of the living conditions and ecology of the reserve, with a main focus on indigenous communities and the circumstances of two primate species, namely the red howler monkey (Alouatta seniculus) and the black-headed squirrel monkey (Saimiri vanzolinii). I outline matrixes of levels of study in ecosemiotics, and scales in human ecology, and apply two scales to the Mamirauá case. These take an individual animal’s and an individual human being’s subjective experience as their respectively starting points. This allows for multi-scale studies of human ecology from complementary angles.

Whose Citizenship? Social Conflict over Property in the United States

Land ownership and the rights in property are central to the American character, having originated as part of the colonial dialogue that led to the American revolution. Yet there has also been substantial social conflict over who has claims to property, and in whose interest. This article presents an interpretive history of citizenship claims to land and property from the colonial period to the present. It argues that a theme in this history is an ever expanding realm of citizenship claims against the individual owner, most markedly since the beginning of the twentieth century. The emergence of the modern environmental movement and a counter so-called private property rights movement in the 1970s forward has accentuated this social conflict. The future likely holds increased conflict in an era of social and political polarisation. The outcome is uncertain, and will depend on democratic dialogue among those with strongly opposing perspectives.

Surfing the Sun Belt South: An Oral History

Surfing the Sun Belt South:An Oral History Steve Estes (bio) Glenn Tanner works at the paper mill north of Charleston, South Carolina. This week, he will have seven, twelve-hour shifts in as many days. He grumbles that the company would rather pay existing workers overtime than hire new ones and pay more benefits. Even though the hours are tough, Glenn is sticking it out. Close to retirement, he can see the light at the end of the tunnel. In Glenn's case, it's the sunlight illuminating the opening of a head-high, glassy tube as the Atlantic Ocean barrels into the Carolina coast.1 Glenn was the second surfer I interviewed for a project on surfing in the American South. The interview took place two hundred yards from the ocean after a dawn patrol surf session at the Folly Beach Pier in South Carolina. Glenn insisted that we meet in the water. A storm brewed. Lightning forked menacingly a few miles offshore. It didn't matter to Glenn. He was most comfortable in the ocean. After our surf session, Glenn was circumspect about his mill work, but when I asked him about the ocean, his answers stretched out in long, swooping arcs that mirrored his classic surf style. He spoke proudly about winning the U.S. Surfing Championship in 1982. At that moment, he was no longer a guy who worked at the paper mill. He was a savvy competitive surfer, who battled the best wave riders in the world.2 [End Page 849] Southern surfing may seem like a surprising topic. The waves in the American South are smaller and less consistent than those that curl along the coasts of California and Hawaii, where surfing constitutes a central part of the culture and identity. Actually, the history of southern surfing reflects many of the major trends in the region since World War II: Cold War militarization, civil rights, the counterculture, the women's movement, environmentalism, and coastal development. More important, a history of southern surfing challenges stereotypes about the South and southerners. I argue that surfing helped integrate southern coastal communities into the culture and economy of the Sun Belt that stretched from Southern California through Virginia, and it endowed individual southerners with a global identity, making them no less southern, but certainly less provincial than they might have otherwise been if they had never caught a wave. This article chronicles the history of southern surfing from its infancy in the late 1950s and early 1960s through its maturation as part of the region's coastal tourist economy in the 1990s and 2000s. Two factors led to the initial growth of southern surfing: the "surf craze" in American mass media of the early 1960s and the Cold War military mobilization that connected coastal communities across the Sun Belt. Surfing lineups began to diversify in terms of not only race, but also gender, from the 1970s through the 1990s. This era also saw the birth of a modern environmental movement that gave southern surfers a political language to articulate conservationist goals just as the Sun Belt economic boom fueled coastal development in the region's once sleepy seaside towns. Development and a growing tourist economy supported a homegrown surf industry that launched the careers of southern entrepreneurs and professional surfers who would be counted among the best in the world. Southern surfers created an alternative subculture and identity that allowed them to shed stereotypes long associated with the region. Historians of the South in the post–World War II era have generally sought to answer questions about the extent of southern exceptionalism based on analyses of civil rights, labor relations, evangelical religion, and Republican Party politics. Matthew D. Lassiter, Joseph Crespino, and other scholars have argued that southern exceptionalism is a myth, highlighting instead political and social continuities across the Sun Belt from California through Virginia. Yet much of this work has focused on conservative cultural and political trends. The subcultures spawned by [End Page 850] surfing tended toward antiestablishment libertarianism. Surfing cultures dovetailed with other southern countercultures, even liberalism, which contradicts the mainstream narrative of the Sun Belt South. Beyond Sun Belt historiography...

The Next Phase of Business Sustainability

Business sustainability has come a long way. From the dawn of the modern environmental movement and the establishment of environmental regulations in the 1970s, it has now become a strategic concern driven by market forces. Today, more than 90 percent of CEOs state that sustainability is important to their company’s profits and success, and companies develop sustainability strategies, market sustainable products and services, create positions such as the chief sustainability officer, and disclose their performance to consumers, investors, activists, and the public at large in sustainability reports.

Suburbs against the Region: Homeowner Environmentalism in 1970s Detroit

Suburban residents in the Detroit metropolitan area practiced a homeowner environmentalism that sought protection of property values, local sovereignty, and a bucolic aesthetic, while rejecting the sacrifice of political power or resources to the larger region. Such homeowner activism deftly navigated a new political terrain created in the wake of passage of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act and the rise of the modern environmental movement. Using three case studies of organizations successfully defying major regional developments, this article illustrates the regional planning challenges created in the context of increasing environmental activism and ongoing urban crisis in Detroit.