Black and Green? Towards an Environmental History of the Oil Industry

Location: KHG Saal (15 June), LMU main building, A120 (16 June)

Organizers: Odinn Melsted, Cyrus Mody, and Simone Schleper (Maastricht University), Christof Mauch (Rachel Carson Center)

With accusations against the international oil industry’s contribution to environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change on the rise, oil companies have reacted by advertising their investments in renewables, pollution control, and more recently “net-zero” efforts. Among concerned publics like environmental activists, however, these counter-narratives are often perceived as “greenwashing”—i.e., superficial efforts intended to confuse rather than sincere steps toward needed change.

Suspicions about the effectiveness and sincerity of Big Oil’s environmental mitigation efforts have a long history. Yet, some oil companies have been at the forefront of alternative energy development, such as ARCO Solar, Scallop Nuclear, or Union Geothermal. In the late 1970s, Exxon and Schlumberger even contributed to the first rechargeable lithium-ion battery, arguably a green transport technology. Several oil actors have shaped the environmental movement itself, such as Maurice Strong, the oilman who chaired the United Nations’ first environmental conference in 1972 and became the first director of the UN Environment Program. Were all those activities simply “greenwashing” as we now understand that term? Or do we need to historicize this concept and differentiate between greenwashing campaigns and genuine efforts by oil companies?

Bringing together scholars working on various aspects of oil (and gas) and environmental histories— black and green—this workshop aims to unpack the concept of “greenwashing.” It aims to engage with the existing literature on the environmental history of oil, while opening future directions for research collaborations on the environmental strategies pursued by oil companies themselves. The workshop is jointly run by the NWO-funded Vici project “Managing Scarcity and Sustainability: The Oil Industry, Environmentalism and Alternative Energy in the Age of Scarcity, 1968-1986” (PI Cyrus Mody, Maastricht University) and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich.

The call for papers can be found here. The deadline is February 20, 2023 for proposals and May 26, 2023 for precirculated papers.