Corporate Compassion
    NOW
    t r u t h o u t | Programming Note

    PBS Airtime: Friday, December 8, 2006, at 8:30 p.m. on PBS. (Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.)

Can capitalism make the world a better place? This time on NOW.

    Corporations don't have the best reputation when it comes to compassion. More often than not, the bottom line leaves no room for benevolence. But some big businesses are taking a new approach. On Friday, December 8 at 8:30 pm, NOW interviews Jonathan Schwartz, the charismatic CEO and president of Sun Microsystems, and billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, about their efforts to invest and grow programs that help make the world a better place. Khosla describes a radical proposal to move all U.S. automobile fuel consumption from gasoline to ethanol.

    "We have a serious energy crisis. We have a serious climate crisis. We have a serious terrorism crisis. All three are related to one issue: oil consumption," Khosla tells NOW's David Brancaccio.

    Starting this Friday, the NOW website at www.pbs.org/now will present a web-exclusive conversation with Khosla about the surprising and Nobel Prize-worthy success of microlending, or loaning small amounts of money to people who use the capital to turn their lives around.