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I’m in Perth at the moment, at the end of the Australian tour of a new documentary ‘Mine Your Own Business’. In the film, British journalist Phelim McAleer meets up with an unemployed 23-year-old Romanian miner Gheorge Lucian and together they explore a mine site in Rosia Montana before travelling together to Madagascar and Chile where environmental campaigining by western activists has prevented other mines going ahead. An underlying theme is that misguided environmental activism has stopped mining projects that would have brought jobs and opportunity to impoverished communities.

The film, produced by New Bera media in conjunction with the Moving Picture Institute in New York (a not for profit dedicated to advancing liberty through the medium of film), will go to film festivals next year and then hopefully into the cinemas. But this last week the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) sponsored the film’s Australian preview with one-off screenings in Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney and Perth.

After each screening there has been time for questions and discussion with Phelim and also Ann McElhinney, his partner and the film’s executive producer. In every city there have been some angry environmentalists in the audience letting us know that they disapproved of the documentary.

In Sydney a woman said that mining was a 200 year old technology that should be abandoned. Phelim followed up with comment that it was actually atleast a 2,000 year old activity and that mining technologies had changed and improved dramatically including over the last 20 years.

Ann followed on with comment that any one who lives in Sydney and is against mining is “living a lie”. She explained how mining provides the infrastructure and energy that we all use everyday.

Was the woman, who clearly stated as part of the discussion that she was “against mining”, living a lie or plain ignorant?

I know educated Australian women who are against logging, but use paper. I know women who are against mining, but couldn’t live without their gold jewellery. I know women who are against irrigation but expect an abundance of fruits, vegetables and affordable wine.

While in Sydney Phelim McAleer caught a bus, watched a movie and logged onto the internet. All activities that couldn’t happen without mining.

Here’s Phelim in front of the Sydney Harbor Bridge – another product of mining.

It is generally assumed that mining companies are bad and green groups are good. This general impression is so well entrenched within western civilization that many environmental activists have got used to being able to tell stories about mining, logging, fishing and farming operations that are misleading, exaggerated or simply wrong. They have got used to professional journalists just repeating their propaganda.

Of course, not all environmentalists mislead, just like not all mining companies are bad. But gee it can be hard getting people to accept this. Most environmentalists are seen as angels with absolutely no vested interests.

It can also be hard getting people to understand that “making poverty history” is about more than attending a rock concert or making a donation. Development and industry are real solutions to poverty and they often involve some environmental harm. Miranda Devine makes some comment on this issue and also gives the new documentary ‘Mine Your Own Business’ a plug in her column in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

“AT U2’s Sydney concerts last week, Bono urged the audience to text their names to a Make Poverty History phone number. Later he flashed the names on a big screen and sent a thank you text to all those mobile phones in Telstra Stadium. As an act of charity it doesn’t come much easier, unless you count wearing wristbands.

This is not to sneer at Bono for raising consciousness of the world’s poor, or his audience for making a gesture.

But as protesters and green activists gather in Melbourne this weekend to lay the usual blame for poverty on the greed of developed nations, a powerful new documentary shines light on a different villain.

Mine Your Own Business, which opens this week, shows that the “powerful group telling the world’s poor how to live, how to work, even how to think” are not the world leaders gathered in Melbourne. They’re not even wealthy multinational corporations, but wealthy multinational environment groups such as Greenpeace.

Read the complete article here: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/make-poverty-history-first-by-getting-rid-of-the-greens/2006/11/18/1163266827937.html

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For information on when and where the documentary is screening this week in Australia visit: www.ipa.org.au