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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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Junk Shots

John Elkington · 29 May 2010 · Leave a Comment

Just finished reading Dave Eggers’ novel Zeitoun, which follows the story of a real family – the husband of Syrian extraction – through the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. What a horrible indictment of what can happen to a modern democracy under the stress of a viciously narrow-minded regime which finds itself under assault, as was the case with the Bush-Cheney Administration.

Then read the June 7 issue of Time, and was struck by the ‘Junk Shot’ column by Joe Klein, who argues that instead of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster being Obama’s Katrina, it is, in fact, “actually George W. Bush’s second Katrina”. Klein notes that former Vice President Dick Cheney came to office hot-foot from Halliburton, also now complicit in Deepwater. More to the point, Cheney then “presided over the weakening of drilling regulations, including the exclusion of remote-shut-off switches (commonly used in the North Sea fields), which might have prevented the disaster.”

Read Klein’s article here.

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Introduction

I began this blog with an entry reporting on a visit to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, on 30 September 2003. The blog element of the website has gone through several iterations since, with much of the older material still available.

Like so many things in my life, blog entries blur the boundaries between the personal and the professional. As explained on this site’s Home Page, the website and the blog are part platform for ongoing projects, part autobiography, and part accountability mechanism.

In addition, my blogs have appeared on many sites such as: Chinadialogue, CSRWire, Fast Company, GreenBiz, Guardian Sustainable Business, and the Harvard Business Review.

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About

John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

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john@johnelkington.com  |  +44 203 701 7550 | Twitter: @volansjohn

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