POLITICS:Green Inhumanity
Fund, John H.
OVE OVER, MICHAEL MOORE. You have competition in the art of political film-making from a 24-year-oldunemployedRomanianminer.And instead of advancing the cause of smug liberal hypocrisy, he's...
...IamsendingthiswatertoPBSsothey will know how we live today," Lucian told me by telephone from Romania...
...Lucian demurs: "People have no food to eat...
...Lucian is exasperated at this portrayal of his hometown...
...Lucian comes from a poor village in Romaniawhereenvironmentalistsarefightingplansfor a new gold mine...
...When Gabriel Resources offered to fund the majority of his proposed $235,000 budget for a film, he jumped at the chance so longashehadfulleditorialcontrol.Heclaimsthemining companyneversawanyofthefootageuntilthefilmwas completed, something that hasn't prevented Greenpeaceandothergroupsfromlabelingit"propaganda...
...The environmentalists are trying to tell us what is best for us, but they have nosolutionsforthehorribleconditionswenowlivein...
...His village of Rosia Montana, where unemployment tops 70 percent and three-quarters of residents lack indoor toilets, desperately needs the $1 billion in new investment and 700 jobs the project wouldbring.Butenvironmentalists--almostallofthem foreign--have blocked it, claiming it will pollute a pristineenvironment...
...John H. Fund, The American Spectator's Politics columnist, is author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books...
...MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS features McAleer and Lucian, the Romanian miner, hopscotching around the globe confronting environmentalists with the real-world consequences of their ideology.P O L I T I C S 4 6 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 GreenInhumanity by John H. Fund M He finds plenty of pincushions to stick needles into.BelgianFrancoiseHeidebroek,amineopponent who lives in far-away Bucharest, claims Rosia Montana is "a magical place" and pompously tells Lucian that his neighbors prefer to use horses rather than cars,andsuggeststheyrelyon"traditionalcattleraising, small agriculture, wood processing" to live...
...But when he went to cover the story of the proposed mine as a reporter for the Financial Times in 2003, he says he was stunned...
...In Fort Dauphin, Madagascar, the site of another proposed mine that is also being blocked by international environmentalists, McAleer finds Mark Fenn, countrydirectorfortheWorldWideFundforNature...
...AllthissetMcAleertothinkingthattheremightbe other examples where mining companies, now part of oneofthemostheavilyregulatedindustriesintheworld, werebeingblockedfrommakinginvestmentsthatcould improve the lot of local residents...
...The biggest threat to the world's poor often comesfromupper-classWesternenvironmentalists," McAleer says...
...He says if the locals (who now earn $100 a month) get more money, "they'll buy cases of beer, invite their friends, they'll throwaparty...three,fourdaysthemoney'sgone...
...Those commodities became economic building blocks creating all the benefits of modern society...
...For his part, McAleer asks Fort Dauphin residents what they would do with any money they might make by working in the mine...
...With few exceptions, they express a desire to send their kids to school...
...Hewentdowntoanearbystreamwherethewater is literally orange--the color of Fanta--from all the pollutioncreatedbythelocalCommunist-erastripmine,a polluted dumping ground that would be cleaned up by GabrielResources,theCanadiancompanythatpromises to bring state-of-the-art gold mining methods to its own nearby project...
...But when it comestoothers,hearguesthatthepoorheistryingto protect from the proposed mine are just as happy as the rich because they smile more...
...George Soros, who is backing many of the anti-mine environmental groups, claims the locals are being `involuntarily' resettled to make way for the mine, but instead I found people queuing up to sell their decrepit houses to the company which was paying well over the market rate...
...When America's PBS aired an anti-developmentdocumentaryinAugustthatshowedscenesof Rosia Montana as a bucolic village threatened by a behemothgoldmine,hedecidedtosenditamessagein abottle--literally...
...Two-thirds have now sold voluntarily...
...J O H NH . F U N D O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 4 7...
...I found that almost everything the environmentalists were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated, or quite simply false," he told me...
...McAleer, the Irish filmmaker who spotlights Lucianinhisdocumentary,considershimselfanenvironmentalist...
...NO WONDER GREENPEACE and 80 other environmental groups demanded earlier this year that the National Geographic Society cancel plans to rent its Washington, D.C., theater to the MovingPictureInstituteforascreeningofMineYour Own Business...
...I know what I need--a job...
...Modern, wealthy Western countries were built ontherichestheypulledfromtheground:coal,metal, oil, and gold...
...Heexplainsthelocal villagers are rich in things other than trifles such as material possessions and "nutrition...
...You have competition in the art of political film-making from a 24-year-oldunemployedRomanianminer.And instead of advancing the cause of smug liberal hypocrisy, he's debunking it...
...People here have no jobs," Fenn admits...
...The truth apparently hurts, and rather than have a real debate the environmental groups simply wanted to shut off the other side...
...Fenn shows off the foundation for the new luxury homehe'sbuildingfarfromthevillagewheretheproposed mine will be built and then displays the new $35,000 catamaran he's just acquired...
...On a video you can see at Lucian's blog "Report from Rosia," he collects samples of the water, which contains 64 times the legal limit for iron, 110 times the legal limit for zinc, and 3.5 times the legal limitforarsenic...
...He claims most of the local opposition to the mine is from "astroturf" lobbies created by Soros-funded environmental groups and notes that the local mayor, who strongly supports the mining project, won re-election justthisspringwith80percentofthevote...
...Gheorge Lucian is the star of a new film by Irish journalists Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney that exposes the all-too-real agenda of the radical green movement...
...It is sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development...
...This film will shock and upset those who, like myself, unquestioningly believed environmentalists were a force for good in the world...
...The demands weren't heeded...
...But now environmentalists are telling people living in the world's poorest countries where electricity and running water are still luxury goods that they are to be denied what McAleer calls the "dignity of development...
...But to the credit of Phelim McAleer and Gheorge Lucian,theyaremakingsurethehypocrisiesandcruelties of the radical environmental movement are exposed to the light of scrutiny for the first time in a long while...
...But if youcouldcounthowmanytimestheysmileinaday,if you could measure stress" and compare that with "well-off people" in London or New York, "then tell me,whoisrichandwhoispoor...
Vol. 40 • October 2007 • No. 8
