Mine your own business

You have to see this:

Mine Your Own Business exposes the dark side of environmentalism. The documentary hacks away at the cosy image of environmentalists' as well meaning, harmless activists.

Mine Your Own Business is the first documentary which asks the hard questions of foreigners who lead campaigns to "save" remote areas from development. Their answers are often disturbing, with racist overtones, but we, in the west, blindly support such campaigns that want to keep people in poverty. Now for the first time "Mine Your Own Business" asks local people about their lives and what they want for the future.

Their answers are very often different from what the foreign environmentalists say and what is reported in the mainstream international media.

Mine Your Own Business demolishes the cosy consensus that environmentalists are well meaning, agenda free, activists and shows them to be anti-development ideologues who think the poor are happy being poor and don't want the development that we, in the west, take for granted.

Mine Your Own Business goes beyond the voice of the foreign environmentalists that we so often hear in the media and meets those who will be most affected by these projects and the well-run campaigns against them.

Mine Your Own Business follows George, a 23-year-old unemployed miner from Rosia Montana in central Romania whose life has been put on hold because of an anti-mining campaign orchestrated by foreign environmentalists.

George explains his hopes and dreams for the future - which are different from those prescribed for him by foreign environmentalists. He then travels to other impoverished communities in Madagascar and Chile who are also desperately waiting for large mining projects. George finds people similar to himself with similar hopes and dreams of a decent job, a house and a decent education and better life for their children.

Mine Your Own Business will be hugely controversial as it makes us all think about the unintended consequences of blindly supporting environmentalist campaigns across the globe. It is a challenge to the green groupthink that allows westerners to deny progress to those who need it most.

There is a blog as well, which also has this. Read it!

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