April 23, 2007

Gored: How Modern Environmentalism's God Punishes the Poor of Pascua Lama, Chile

Over halfway through the excellent documentary Mine Your Own Business there's a fascinating revelation: environmentalists fighting a proposed gold mine high in the Andes mountains on the border between Chile and Argentina are being supported in their fight against Toronto-based Barrick Gold by local landowners for a reason that has little to do with protecting the environment - and everything to do with intentionally keep the poor people of Pascua Lama, Chile, poor.

According to locals including a community activist in the poor village of Pascua Lama, the landowners' opposition to the project stems from their opposition to the higher wages Barrick will pay - the landowners prefer their local workforce be willing to work cheap.

I was reminded of that fact as I read this story from the April 18 issue of Embassy, a Canadian foreign-policy weekly magazine, which reports that "the world's most famous environmental activist, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, has forced" Barrick Gold, one of Canada's largest mining companies, "to abandon its attempts to sponsor an environmental conference at which Mr. Gore is scheduled to speak."

And why did Gore force conference organizers to return Barrick's $50,000 sponsorship funding? Because of the Pascua Lama mine project. A U.S.-based environmental NGO convinced Gore to use his leverage to force Barrick to withdraw from funding the environmental conference.

[Mining Watch Canada research coordinator Catherine Coumans] said when environment and mining activists learned that Mr. Gore was to speak at an event sponsored by Barrick Gold, they lost no time explaining the Pascua Lama situation to him.

"Because [the issue in Chile] is about glaciers, the link is too close," Ms. Coumans said. "Al Gore's whole presentation started off with showing the dramatic loss of glaciers through global warming. And the mine that Barrick is proposing is going to damage glaciers."

Ms. Coumans accused the company of trying to piggyback on Mr. Gore's reputation as a crusader for the environment. "And, of course, Al Gore is just about God as far as the environmental movement goes right now. And to have Barrick's logo stuck on a poster with Al Gore's name on it, the association would look good for Barrick."

Although an anti-mining activist in the film - who lives London and had never visited Pascua Lama - alleged the project would require the removal of three entire glaciers, a Barrick spokesperson in MYOB says the mining project would disturb just one percent of the glaciers.

Gore clearly didn't get all the facts, and made a symbolic move because, well, because "Al Gore is just about God as far as the environmental movement goes right now."

But he's not an all-knowing, all-caring god.

The Pascua Lama project would provide 5,500 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent mining jobs for the impoverished village. More than 27,000 people have applied for jobs at the mine, which would pay wages double that the the local poor can earn doing manual farm labor on the rich landowners' vast farms, according to the MYOB documentary.

By taking sides against Barrick Gold and against the Pascua Lama project, Al Gore stood firmly against thousands of poor Chileans having a chance to escape poverty.