ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a long-term business history perspective on sustainability. The twentieth century is unique in history, not only because of its enormous technological progress and rise in the standard of living, but because no other century in human history can be compared with the twentieth century for its growth in energy use, depletion of natural resources and an overall growth of problems related to global environmental sustainability (McNeill, 2000; UNEP, 2016). 1 It has often been asserted that industrial capitalism, globalization and multinational companies have been central actors in this development (Wright and Nyberg, 2015).
