NEWS SUMMARY - 11/27-12/03

• December 1 was World Aids Day, and many publications recognized it through thoughtful articles. In particular, the Financial Times ran a piece on “Business and Aids” that urged the private sector to do more.
• The EPA has been arguing before the Supreme Court that its mandate does not include carbon dioxide, while a coalition of states is arguing that it does. Plenty of news outlets are covering the regulatory dispute, including the New York Times (see “Justices' First Brush With Global Warming," 11/30/06).
• Several news items from the auto industry: Apparently, General Motors has seen the light, and is now investing in electric cars and hybrid technology, which it hopes will not only boost sales of those cars at some point in the future, but also help with the company's flagging image today. Meanwhile, Volkswagen AG and DaimlerChrysler AG are experimenting with cleaner forms of diesel - clean enough to meet Californa's strict environmental regulations.
• For researchers in environmental science, the big news of the week is the just-unveiled GEONETCast tool, which can provide environmental data worldwide and free of charge (see “The Pulse of the Planet”; The Economist 12/02/06).
• Starbucks is in the news, getting a bad rap for opposing an Ethiopian effort to trademark natively-grown coffee beans (The Times Online, 11/27/06); some feel that while Starbucks had generally been seen as a good corporate citizen, this move will just make it seem greedy.
  
• BP is also being called out for hypocrisy (see TownHall.com 11/25/06), as the company settled a lawsuit related to its Texas City refinery accident of last year, which killed 15 workers and injured 170. The company's environmental marketing had been quite compelling, but Forbes also noticed the discrepency this week in its article "When is Being Good Not Good Enough?" (Forbes, 11/28/06)
• Also, check out this WorldChanging piece on a very creative and beneficial use of advertising space - a billboard that is also a solar panel, used to power the local school!