Environmental Talk

The mime: the clown’s dirty cousin

The World Wildlife Fund is trying to keep mimes out of Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. This is a good thing. The last thing a poor, desolate part of Africa needs is an influx of street performers who will compete for … wait, what? The WWF is against mines in Fort Dauphin.

Well, that’s a different story. Roy Innis, chairman of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), had something to say about the WWF and other organizations in a recent editorial that appeared in Investor’s Business Daily…

The WWF, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and other multinational activist groups battle mines in Romania, Peru, Chile, Ghana and Indonesia; electricity projects in Uganda, India and Nepal; biotechnology that could improve farm incomes and reduce malnutrition in Kenya, India, Brazil and the Philippines; and DDT that could slash malaria rates in Africa, where the disease kills 3,000 children a day.

They harp on technology’s speculative hazards and ignore real, life-or-death dangers that modern mining, development and technology would reduce or prevent. They never mention the jobs, clinics, schools, roads, improved housing and small business opportunities — or the electricity, refrigeration, safe water, better nutrition, reduced disease and fewer dead children.

Mr. Innis takes aim at one of the key problems that many reasonable people have with hard-core environmentalism - it smacks of elitism and Big Brother power-grabbing.

Whether it’s a former Senator with a personal energy bill 10 times higher than the state average or an activist lawyer from an American political dynasty opposing wind farming near his property while insisting the rest of us foot the bill for energy alternatives, there seem to be no shortage of politicians, lawyers and lobbying groups telling you what’s best for you (even if you are too uniformed or naive to know it).

Mr. Innis gives us a clear example of this type of behavior as it relates to the mine in Madagascar:

“People here have no jobs,” Mark Fenn admitted, after taking documentary producers on a tour of his $35,000 catamaran and the site of his new coastal home. “But if you could count how many times they smile in a day, if you could measure stress” and compare that with “well-off people” in London or New York, “then tell me, who is rich and who is poor?”

Fenn is coordinator of the World Wildlife Fund’s campaign against a proposed mining project near Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. The locals strongly support the project and want the jobs, development, improved living standards and environmental quality the state-of-the-art operation will bring…

But Fenn claims the mine will change the “quaint” village and harm the environment. He says he feels “like a resident,” his children “were born and raised” there, and the locals “don’t consider education to be important” and would just spend their money on parties, jeans and stereos.

WTF. How is it that Fenn forgot to mention watermelon and comfortable shoes?

Shall we talk about “morality” while we’re on the subject? Innis goes on to contrast the “benefits” and “evils” of two different courses of action:

Agitators use global warming and “corporate social responsibility” to force companies to acquiesce to their agendas — and ignore human rights to energy and technology, and people’s desperate cries for a chance to take their rightful places among the Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.

They pervert “sustainable development” to mean no development, and ignore how mines will lay the foundation that will sustain prosperity and better living standards for generations …

Why hasn’t the United Nations criticized the institutional racism being perpetrated in the name of “saving the planet”? Where are U.S. civil rights groups, media, churches and these poor countries’ leaders? This intolerable situation cannot continue. People of conscience must no longer remain silent.

The full editorial is at the Investors Business Daily website. It is a powerful, well-reasoned case for encouraging progress and letting people decide their own destinies.

global warming, climate change, Roy Innis, CORE, Congress of Racial Equality, Africa, Fort Dauphin, Madagascar, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, Mark Fenn, progress, technology,