![]() | The Price of Permanence: Nature and Business in the New South Subjects: Southern States -- Environmental conditions; Environmental policy -- Southern States -- History; Environmental responsibility -- Southern States -- History; Economic development -- Environmental aspects -- Southern States -- History; Business enterprises; Using the lens of environmental history, William D. Bryan provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the post-Civil War South by framing the New South as a struggle over environmental stewardship. For more than six decades, scholars have caricatured southerners as so desperate for economic growth that they rapaciously consumed the region's abundant natural resources. Yet business leaders and public officials did not see profit and environmental quality as mutually exclusive goals, and they promoted methods of conserving resources that they thought would ensure long-term economic growth. Southerners called this idea "permanence." But permanence was a contested concept, and these businesspeople clashed with other stakeholders as they struggled to find new ways of using valuable resources. The Price of Permanence shows how these struggles indelibly shaped the modern South. WILLIAM D. BRYAN is an environmental historian in Atlanta, Georgia. |
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