The Greening of Apple

Apple has pledged to improve its record on environmental issues following an award-winning lobbying campaign by Greenpeace, which wants the company to go even further, according to the Guardian.
Steve Jobs, chief executive, announced yesterday that the technology giant is taking steps to stop using toxic chemicals in its computers, displays and iPods.
By 2008, it will have completely removed arsenic from all its displays, and stopped using flame-retardant chemicals and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in any products. It also pledged to stop using mercury in its monitor backlighting, when this becomes "technically and economically feasible".

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Cash for Climate Deniers?

Have you got academic credentials? Looking to make some serious change? Then you may already be a winner. The American Enterprise Institute has offered $10,000 to academics willing to contribute to a book on climate change policy, according to the San Jose Mecury News.

Greenpeace spokeswoman Jane Kochersperger, who noted that AEI has received funding from Exxon Mobil in recent years, said Sunday that the think tank ``has clearly hit a new low . . . when it's throwing out cash awards under the rubric of `reason' to create confusion on the status of climate science. Americans are still suffering the impacts of Hurricane Katrina, and it's clearly time for policy-makers on both sides of the aisle to take substantive action on global warming and ignore Exxon Mobil's disinformation campaign via climate skeptics.''

But AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green, one of two researchers who has sought to commission the critiques, said in an interview that his group is examining the policy debate on global warming, not the science.
``It's completely policy-oriented,'' said Green, adding that one-third of the academics AEI solicited for the project are interested in participating. ``Somebody wants to distort this.''


Visit us at www.irejn.org.