So Apple recently left the US Chamber of Commerce in a dispute about climate change. Apple works hard to reduce their impact, while the CoC fought EPA regulation, arguing that it would be too expensive to reduce pollution. I, for one, buy a lot of Apple products specifically because they are "green"! My desktop is a Mac Mini, and I love that it consumes 1W in sleep mode, 17W in idle, and I love that I can leave it asleep, then have it "wake on demand" when I want to stream content from iTunes to my Apple TV or Airport Express thanks to a new feature of Snow Leopard! It seems like they are big innovators in green technology (not a big surprise, since Al Gore is on their board of directors). I'm a big fan!
All I can say is that if they are opposed to the stance taken by the CoC then good for them that they stood their ground.
Good for Apple! One of the fundamental problems with an unregulated free market is that many corporations will behave in ways that damage the nation in the quest for short-term profits. And our corporate culture encourages this bad behavior through large executive bonuses based on short-term profits, and the short tenure of executive positions: When an executive expects to remain a short time at a given company, he has no incentive to make the company a good corporate citizen.
Apple isn't the only one to leave over this, either... California's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., has also left for the same reasoning, as has Nike.
