CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
National
Geographic Society to Screen Pro-Mining Industry Documentary – Greenpeace
Not Pleased
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 4, January 17, 2007
The National Geographic Society next week will host the screening of a mine
industry funded documentary – Mine
Your Own Business – that claims that poor people need mines –
and that environmentalists who fight mines are fighting against the interests
of the poor.
The force behind the movie is Phelim McAleer, a former reporter for the Financial
Times and the Economist magazine.
McAleer calls his movie “the world's first anti-environmentalist documentary.”
And predictably, the environmentalists are not happy.
John Passacantando, Greenpeace USA’s executive director, shot off a tough e-mail to the National Geographic Society arguing that the movie is “a piece of propaganda run by a mining company, disguised as a critique of the environmental movement.”
“From what I know so far, 80 percent of the budget of Mine Your Own Business was contributed by Gabriel Resources, a Canadian gold mining company,” Passacantando wrote. “The film's director Phelim McAleer claims to be an environmentalist and a ‘liberal lefty European journalist’ who has come to realize the grave threat that environmentalists pose the world's poor. However, on a televised debate on November 2, 2006 in Ireland McAleer called climate science ‘junk science’ and called climate change ‘unproven.’”
For the past ten years, the Toronto-based Gabriel Resources has been trying to get the $638 million Rosia Montana project in western Romania off the ground, but claims to have been stymied by international environmental groups.
The movie focuses on the poor people of the region.
The movie claims that environmentalists are keeping poor villagers in Romania from getting jobs at the mine.
“I know what I need. I need a job,” one young Romanian man says.
“The people who are against the project are rich people,” say a woman named Ella. “They are not here, like us. We have to eat. We need jobs and we have to work.”
But Passacantando says the film is “PR for a mining company that is trying to greenwash some nasty efforts in Romania.”
Passacantando said that in recent years, the National Geographic Society has moved from being a passive explorer society to being active environmentalists – publishing an entire issue of its flagship magazine recently on the causes and dangers of global warming.
And so he can’t understand the need to rent the space to the film makers.
“If I wanted to rent out space at Greenpeace to show the film, my members wouldn’t let me,” Passacantando said.
The National Geographic Society’s Betty Hudson said it’s a simple case of a “facilities rental” – renting out the Grosvenor Auditorium, at the Society’s headquarters building in downtown Washington, D.C.
“The auditorium is rarely available, but when it is available, we rent it out,” Hudson said. “Usually, it’s not available. This time it was.”
Can anybody rent the auditorium?
“Yes, assuming it’s available.”
Well, you wouldn’t rent it out to show a pornographic movie, would you?
“I would guess we wouldn’t, no” Hudson said.
What about a pro-Nazi propaganda film?
“I guess we wouldn’t, no.”
So, not just anybody can rent out the auditorium?
“We are not taking a position on this particular movie,” Hudson said. “We did not preview the film. We looked at the trailer. It is a different point of view. It is a different perspective. We may or may not agree with it. But that is not the issue here. It is a different point of view.”
The movie shows January 24, 2007 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. with a reception to follow.
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