Ford has become the latest multinational to withdraw from the Global Climate Coalition, a lobby group campaigning against worldwide measures to reduce global warming.
A Ford spokesman told EP: ‘We haven’t renewed our membership and although it’s not something we have announced publicly, we have informed interested parties.’
He added: ‘The coalition was a useful way for companies to talk to governments about global warming issues, but it inhibited our ability to move forward on environmental policies.
‘We feel it is up to governments and companies to get to grips with this issue and the coalition is not necessarily the best route to do that’.
A number of very large companies, including Shell and BP Amoco, have recently severed their links with the US-based coalition, which opposes the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
The Global Climate Coalition said that it was disappointed by Ford’s decision, which it claimed had been ‘driven by a campaign of misinformation by fringe environmental groups’. The coalition was set up in 1989.