This chapter shows how two presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, engaged the biotechnol... more This chapter shows how two presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, engaged the biotechnology debates of the 1980s and 1990s. Their actions reveal how diplomacy as well as domestic political concerns shaped executive policies regarding Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Bush and Clinton supported biotech innovation not because of the potential to feed the hungry multitudes but because it promised to aid American agribusiness in competitive world markets.
Monsanto’s transformation from a chemical firm to a biotechnology business in the 1980s and 1990s... more Monsanto’s transformation from a chemical firm to a biotechnology business in the 1980s and 1990s reveals that an increasingly small corporate cartel gained dominion over petroleum refining byproducts and that this concentration of ownership had profound implications for the future solvency of Monsanto. As the price of petrochemical feedstocks rose, Monsanto, a company that made 80 percent of its products from fossil fuels, began to pursue an alternative path to profits. In short, concentrated corporate ownership of critical natural resources forced some companies in the chemical commodity production business to pursue radically new ways of generating cash flow. This was especially true for scavenger capitalists such as Monsanto, firms that had historically made their money by scavenging raw material stockpiles produced by booming commercial industries. For firms invested heavily in commodity production but lacking proprietary claims to critical natural resources, the key was findin...
... Also see Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from Worl... more ... Also see Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 ... Joe Nick Patoski, “Southern Rock,” The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, ed. Anthony ...
Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how ... more Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how did the Coca-Cola Company acquire the natural resources it needed to become one of the most ubiquitous branded items of commercial trade in the twentieth century? The dissertation shows how Coke satiated its ecological appetite by depending on state institutions and private sector partners that built infrastructure Coke required to extract, at low cost, raw materials for its beverage products. Not just a story of one soda company, Citizen Coke chronicles the making of Coca-Cola capitalism, a new strategy for accumulating profits first introduced in the Gilded Age that involved scavenging natural capital abundance generated by vertically integrated industrial empires, agribusinesses, and government-run utilities.
Many people today consider curbside recycling the quintessential model of eco-stewardship, yet th... more Many people today consider curbside recycling the quintessential model of eco-stewardship, yet this waste-management system in the United States was in many ways a pollutersponsored initiative that allowed corporations to expand their productive capacity without fixing fundamental flaws in their packaging technology. For the soft-drink, brewing, and canning industries, the promise of recycling became a powerful weapon for combating mandatory deposit bills and other source-reduction measures in the 1970s and 1980s. In examining the nexus of business, envirotech, and political history, this article explores how American corporations enrolled government agencies to construct resource reclamation systems in the United States that became models for waste management programs in municipalities around the world.
Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how ... more Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how did the Coca-Cola Company acquire the natural resources it needed to become one of the most ubiquitous branded items of commercial trade in the twentieth century? The dissertation shows how Coke satiated its ecological appetite by depending on state institutions and private sector partners that built infrastructure Coke required to extract, at low cost, raw materials for its beverage products. Not just a story of one soda company, Citizen Coke chronicles the making of Coca-Cola capitalism, a new strategy for accumulating profits first introduced in the Gilded Age that involved scavenging natural capital abundance generated by vertically integrated industrial empires, agribusinesses, and government-run utilities.
This chapter shows how two presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, engaged the biotechnol... more This chapter shows how two presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, engaged the biotechnology debates of the 1980s and 1990s. Their actions reveal how diplomacy as well as domestic political concerns shaped executive policies regarding Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Bush and Clinton supported biotech innovation not because of the potential to feed the hungry multitudes but because it promised to aid American agribusiness in competitive world markets.
Monsanto’s transformation from a chemical firm to a biotechnology business in the 1980s and 1990s... more Monsanto’s transformation from a chemical firm to a biotechnology business in the 1980s and 1990s reveals that an increasingly small corporate cartel gained dominion over petroleum refining byproducts and that this concentration of ownership had profound implications for the future solvency of Monsanto. As the price of petrochemical feedstocks rose, Monsanto, a company that made 80 percent of its products from fossil fuels, began to pursue an alternative path to profits. In short, concentrated corporate ownership of critical natural resources forced some companies in the chemical commodity production business to pursue radically new ways of generating cash flow. This was especially true for scavenger capitalists such as Monsanto, firms that had historically made their money by scavenging raw material stockpiles produced by booming commercial industries. For firms invested heavily in commodity production but lacking proprietary claims to critical natural resources, the key was findin...
... Also see Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from Worl... more ... Also see Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 ... Joe Nick Patoski, “Southern Rock,” The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, ed. Anthony ...
Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how ... more Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how did the Coca-Cola Company acquire the natural resources it needed to become one of the most ubiquitous branded items of commercial trade in the twentieth century? The dissertation shows how Coke satiated its ecological appetite by depending on state institutions and private sector partners that built infrastructure Coke required to extract, at low cost, raw materials for its beverage products. Not just a story of one soda company, Citizen Coke chronicles the making of Coca-Cola capitalism, a new strategy for accumulating profits first introduced in the Gilded Age that involved scavenging natural capital abundance generated by vertically integrated industrial empires, agribusinesses, and government-run utilities.
Many people today consider curbside recycling the quintessential model of eco-stewardship, yet th... more Many people today consider curbside recycling the quintessential model of eco-stewardship, yet this waste-management system in the United States was in many ways a pollutersponsored initiative that allowed corporations to expand their productive capacity without fixing fundamental flaws in their packaging technology. For the soft-drink, brewing, and canning industries, the promise of recycling became a powerful weapon for combating mandatory deposit bills and other source-reduction measures in the 1970s and 1980s. In examining the nexus of business, envirotech, and political history, this article explores how American corporations enrolled government agencies to construct resource reclamation systems in the United States that became models for waste management programs in municipalities around the world.
Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how ... more Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how did the Coca-Cola Company acquire the natural resources it needed to become one of the most ubiquitous branded items of commercial trade in the twentieth century? The dissertation shows how Coke satiated its ecological appetite by depending on state institutions and private sector partners that built infrastructure Coke required to extract, at low cost, raw materials for its beverage products. Not just a story of one soda company, Citizen Coke chronicles the making of Coca-Cola capitalism, a new strategy for accumulating profits first introduced in the Gilded Age that involved scavenging natural capital abundance generated by vertically integrated industrial empires, agribusinesses, and government-run utilities.
Uploads
Papers by Bartow Elmore