May 27, 2007

Fighting Back

I have written a few times in the past about Mine Your Own Business, an excellent documentary exposing the dark side of the environmental movement. Now comes word that the mining industry, the target of the unfair attacks exposed in MYOB, is fighting back...

Mining Environmental Management magazine reports:

The backlash against NGOs and the environmentalist movement has notched up a gear. The release of the ‘Mine Your Own Business’, a pro-mining piece of propaganda or a rebuttal of anti-mining claims and inaccuracies, depending on your view point, and the subsequent furore has galvanised both sides of the debate.

Calls are now being made from within the industry for miners to ‘step up to the plate’ and to fight back publically. The good work done by NGOs and the environmental lobby has been commended, but some miners are saying that the industry is shying away from speaking out against detractors because it is deemed to be unprofessional on their part.

It is argued that the NGOs and environmentalists criticise the industry for its lack of transparency and yet these same organisations seem to lack transparency themselves.

Speaking at this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association in Toronto, Phelim McAleer (the director of ‘Mine Your Own Business’) said these organisations have a set of political beliefs, and should be treated with the same scepticism as other organisations or businesses are treated or expect to be treated.

Delegates at the conference said NGOs such as Greenpeace are now big businesses themselves, with directors on salaries of several hundred thousand dollars a year. The question to them should not just be where do they get their money, and who backs them, but how is their money spent and who gives them the moral or elected authority to do what they do. After all, these are the same questions they pose to the mining industry.

Update: MYOB will be screened at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC on Wednesday night.