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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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#MakeThePlanetGreatAgain

John Elkington · 3 June 2017 · Leave a Comment

The eyes say it all

A week of ups and downs. Read Yael Neeman’s wonderful, haunting book We Were The Future, a memoir of being raised on a kibbutz in the heyday and then relative decline of the movement. and there have been moment this week when some in the climate action movement must have felt the same, as the Donald ducked out of the Paris climate accord – or at least signalled his intention to leave.

Ironic to hear him say he was doing it for Pittsburgh, not Paris, and then see Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto say his city wanted to remain.

I very much like President Macron’s line, now a hashtag: #MakeThePlanetGreatAgain.

Paul Krugman has suggested that Trump may even have done this out of spite, which his eyes (above) would suggest is not impossible. Some even suggest that it’s pay-back for the infamous white-knuckle hand-shake with President Macron. And I wondered who initiated that …?

Are the politics of the playground playing out in climate change?

*****

On the upside, work continues apace on our impending Carbon Productivity Basecamp, slated for 14 June. And I did my latest round of blogs on Geoffrey West’s insightful new book, Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies.

Encouraging sense of scientific rigour throughout the book, a useful counter-blast to all those CEOs and others who say they are on a sustainability trajectory simply because they think so.

And intriguing to think through what we can do to keep the sustainability movement scaling, in ways that the kibbutz movement didn’t. One shared barrier may be the sense of inevitable sacrifice in pursuit of a higher cause, though just maybe the exponential growth in the affordability of renewable energy might tip the scales over the next generation or three.

Yael Neeman

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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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