Ouch, this is going to leave a mark.
In the movie, many of the critics who claim to live in the affected areas are less than honest. One, a Swiss environmentalist who leads the opposition to mining in Romania, actually lives in the sort of town to which many of the impoverished peasants of Rosia Montana want to move.
The terrorists are adamant that the locals should preserve their “pristine” environment. A Belgian environmentalist says the people of Rosia Montana would rather use carts and horses than pollute the air with cars. “She says this to get noticed,” counters a Romanian peasant who looks totally bewildered.
Half a world away, when confronted with the argument that denying the people of Fort Dauphin a chance to obtain jobs would keep them poor, the leading critic of the ilmenite project and the owner of a luxurious catamaran pontificates to Gheorghe Lucian, an unemployed Romanian traveling with the film’s crew: “I could put you with a family here and you can count how many times people smile … and I can put you with a family that is well-off in New York and London and you can count how many times they smile, and then you can tell me who is rich and who is poor.”
Barf.
There has to be something seriously wrong with people who condemn others to poverty and despair “for their own good”.
T.L.,
Alas this is far from uncommon in the third world. I spent some time in a little town in the Philippines that had a similar situation. A South Korean company had wanted to setup a mine and a concrete plant up in the boonies of this town. The environmentalists came in droves and convinced the people not to allow the cement plant. Instead they focused on the local fishing industry. Ironically, by depriving the locals of better paying jobs, the environmentalists have helped encourage fishing practices in the coral reef around Cape Bolinao that involve such environmentally friendly methods as explosives and cyanide. And then there was the massive “fish-kill” that happened a few months after I left due to overemphasis on aquaculture fishing in the area…
Isn’t it amusing when environmentalists manage to not only screw with peoples lives and livelihoods, but also end up promoting more environmental damage in the long run? Well, I guess amusing probably isn’t the word…
~Jon