Do Car-pool lanes waste time?

We have decades of "burning issues" which are taught with religious fervour and then fade away as the science changes.
I recently watched a video of Bobby Kennedy telling a classroom of fresh faced children that pollution was so bad that within 10 years they would be wearing masks and having to live underground - really!
Corporations and their Boards are facing these burning issues of the year and having to decide how to work with them. It costs money to support decisions about the environment - some are good but some are less effective for the cost of implementation.
Again, good old Ted Rogers talks gruffly about dealing with putting social issues and environment issues above business priorities:


investors have their pet issues; for example, whether or not a company:

• is "green," or environmentally conscious.
• does or does not do business with certain countries or groups of people.
• supplies the U.S. Armed Forces.
• is "involved in the community" in appropriate ways.
• pays its CEO too much compared with its lowest-paid employee.
• pays its CEO too much as declared by self-appointed "industry watchdogs."
• gives to certain charities.
• is willing to consider layoffs when the company is losing money.
• is willing to consider layoffs to streamline its organization (so-called downsizing).
• has a retirement plan.
• pays for all or part of a health-care plan.
• budgets a certain minimum percentage of payroll costs for employee training.
• places employees on its Board of Directors (you forgot this one).
• shares its profits with employees.

We believe Cypress has an excellent record on these issues. But that's because it's the way we choose to run the business for ourselves and our shareholders -- not because we run the business according to the mandates of special-interest groups. Other companies, perhaps those in older industries just trying to hold on to jobs, might find the choices our company makes devastating to their businesses and, consequently, their employees.
No one set of choices could be correct for all companies.
Indeed, it would be impossible for any company to accede to all of the special interests, because they are often in conflict with one another.
For example, Cypress won a San Jose Mayor's Environmental Award for water conservation. Our waste water from the Minnesota plant is so clean we are permitted to put it directly into a lake teeming with wildlife. (A game warden station is the next door neighbor to that plant.)
Those facts might qualify us as a "green" company, but some investors would claim the opposite because we adamantly oppose wasteful, government-mandated, ride-sharing programs and believe that car-pool lanes waste the time of the finest minds in Silicon Valley by creating government-inflicted traffic jams -- while increasing pollution, not decreasing it, as claimed by some self-declared "environmentalists."