Speakout: Environmentalists are new foes of some of the world's poorest

Rocky Mountain News ^ | 23 Sept 06 | Phelim Mcaleer

[Tripleplay]

That would be an average January in Fairbanks. -40 for days and even weeks is common. And that is C or F, no debate.

Interesting info, but I was born before Alaska was a state.

[antonia]

September 23, 2006 Opinion RockyMountainNews.com

Speakout: Environmentalists are new foes of some of the world's poorest

By Phelim Mcaleer

Colorado's miners have struggled long and hard for the right to organize and have safe working conditions.

Many have paid with their lives in this struggle.

Some were the victims of the poor safety standards that used to characterize the industry, while others died in bloody confrontations when mine owners were quick to hire private armies to confront troublesome workers.

As a liberal European journalist, I was familiar with these stories and also knew about how Europe's miners faced similar battles to improve their working lives. These struggles meant that miners have always had a special status for us left-wingers. They were a superior breed who fought for themselves and the rights of all workers.

However in my more recent journalism, I have discovered there is a new threat to miners, their families and their wider communities.

This threat is not from cigar-sucking, champagne-swilling robber barons. Mining is now one of the most regulated businesses in the world. Banks will not lend to, insurance companies will not cover and governments will not give licenses to companies that want to open unsafe or polluting mines.

Instead I have discovered that the biggest threat to miners and their families comes from upper-class Western environmentalists.

The discovery has been particularly shocking because at heart I have always been an environmentalist. I want to protect the planet for future generations. I want to ensure that industry cleans up its messes and does more good than harm.

My admiration for environmentalists started to decline when I was lucky enough to be posted to Romania as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. There I covered a campaign by Western environmentalists against a proposed mine at Rosia Montana in the Transylvania region of the country.

It was the usual story. The environmentalists told how Gabriel Resources, a Canadian mining company, was going to pollute the en

vironment and forcibly resettle locals before destroying a pristine wilderness. But when I went to see the village for myself I found that almost everything the environmentalists were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated or quite simply false.

Rosia Montana was already a heavily polluted village because of the 2,000 years of mining in the area. The mining company actually planned to clean up the existing mess.

And the locals, rather than being forcibly resettled as the environmentalists claimed, were queuing up to sell their decrepit houses to the company which was paying well over the market rate.

It was surprising that environmentalists would lie, but the most shocking part was yet to come. As I spoke to the Western environmentalists it quickly emerged that they wanted to stop the mine because they felt that development and prosperity will ruin the rural "idyllic" lifestyle of these happy peasants.

This "lifestyle" includes 70 percent unemployment, two-thirds of the people having no running water and using an outhouse in winters where the temperature can plummet to 20 degrees below zero centigrade.

One environmentalist (foreign of course) tried to persuade me that villagers actually preferred riding a horse and cart to driving a car.

Of course the Rosia Montana villagers wanted a modern life - just like the rest of us. They wanted indoor bathrooms and the good schools and medical care that the large investment would bring.

When I left the Financial Times, the plight of these villagers never really left me. I have come across a lot of tragedies and hard-luck stories as a journalist, but I had never covered a situation where the solution to poverty is being opposed by educated Westerners who think that people really are "poor but happy."

When a representative of Gabriel Resources asked me to write a brochure about the project I declined, but I did suggest that if they did not interfere editorially I would make a documentary.

I gathered up extra funding and the documentary Mine Your Own Business premieres Tuesday at the Denver Gold Forum at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Denver. The film will shock and upset those who, like myself, unquestioningly believed environmentalists were a force for good in the world.

For Mine your Own Business I started looking beyond Romania and found a similar pattern in very different villages in Africa and South America.

It is sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development.

However, it is not sad but tragic that the real losers in this clash of cultures are some of the poorest people on the planet.

Phelim McAleer is an Irish-born journalist and documentary filmmaker. Contact him at www.mineyourownbusiness.org. See the trailer for his new film at http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=j2U39butIUs.