International business briefs: Automakers must clean up act, EPA director, Everest litter climb, Coral symposium, EPA air pollution report, Mapping Madagascar
Global Exchange and Rainforest Action Network today denounced Ford Motor Company and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers for filing a Federal lawsuit to overturn California's widely popular new vehicle emissions standards. California's new regulations are the nation's first-ever rules to reduce emissions linked to global warming and the most advanced automotive greenhouse gas reduction targets in the world. The announcement came on the same day as the release of "Automaker Rankings 2004," a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists that ranks Ford as having "the absolute worst heat-trapping gas emissions performance of all the Big Six automakers." The US EPA has ranked Ford with the worst overall fuel efficiency of all major automakers for 20 or the last 30 years, including every year since 2000. "Instead of hiring lawyers and lobbyists to fight against reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Ford and other automakers should be hiring engineers to comply with this eminently reasonable law," said Jason Mark, clean car campaigner at the human rights group Global Exchange. "Rather than resist progress, Ford and other automakers need to start driving progress forward."
