THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 170, September 6, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ACTIVIST FRAUD & FUND RAISING:
The World's Poor Are Mere Pawns & Collateral Damage
in the Environmentalists' War on Corporations
By Paul K. Driessen
POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM & SOCIAL RADICALISM VERSUS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT & IMPROVED LIVING
CONDITIONS IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES: POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS & OTHER RADICAL PRESSURE
GROUPS ARE WAGING A WAR OF PROPAGANDA & OUTRIGHT LIES AGAINST CORPORATIONS ENGAGED IN MINERAL
EXTRACTION & ENERGY PRODUCTION IN THE WORLD'S POORER NATIONS -- RADICAL SOCIAL & ENVIRONMENTAL
ACTIVISTS & IDEOLOGUES SEEK TO BLOCK GLOBALIZATION, MODERNIZATION, FOREIGN INVESTMENT, MINING, & FOSSIL
FUEL DEVELOPMENT -- ENVIRONMENTALISTS & OTHER RADICAL ACTIVISTS PURSUE THEIR IDEOLOGICAL AGENDAS AT
THE EXPENSE OF THE WORLD'S POOR
FULL STORY:
“What you get in your mailbox,” Audubon Society CEO Dan Beard once admitted,” is a never-ending stream of shrill
material, designed to evoke emotions, so you’ll sit down and write a check.” Added Sierra Club Conservation Director
Bruce Hamilton:
“I’m somewhat offended by it. But it works.
It’s what builds the Sierra Club.”
No doubt. But others pay a heavy price. And “shrill” hardly begins to describe the fabrications and vitriol of campaigns
against companies, especially those in extractive industries.
As developed countries build and upgrade facilities and infrastructures, China and India are leading the way in electrifying
and modernizing poorer nations at an unprecedented pace. With three billion people struggling on $750 a year, 2 billion still
without electricity or running water, and millions dying annually from malnutrition and diseases rarely seen in the West, the
efforts are long overdue.
All require raw materials, and companies are scrambling to develop new energy and mineral deposits. While resource
extraction is dangerous, dirty and ecologically intrusive, most Western firms emphasize modern technology, health, safety
and environmental standards, land reclamation, and cooperation with local and indigenous people. Their operations are
usually a major improvement over those conducted by millions of small, poorly regulated and often illegal “artisanal” mines,
and even many government-run mines, smelters, and oil production facilities in poor countries.
For radical social and environmental activists, however, none of this is relevant; correcting and punishing violations is
insufficient. They simply don’t want globalization, foreign investment, mining. or fossil fuel development.
More important, foreign-owned energy and mineral companies operating in developing countries are perfect focal points
for well-orchestrated campaigns that stir up anger and resentment over exaggerated or imaginary environmental and human
rights violations – so that people will write a check, and help build the activists’ visibility and power. Indigenous
companies and operations, no matter how horrendous, don’t offer those bonuses and are thus ignored.
Moreover, the agitators clearly have the political and PR savvy, Internet skills, and sympathetic media contacts to spin
even the most trumped-up charges into gold. Some tip-of-the-iceberg examples are the following:
(1) In 1995, Greenpeace railed that Shell Oil planned to sink a
retired platform filled with oil. Its blitzkrieg embarrassed the
company and garnered the Rainbow Warriors extensive
news coverage. A year later, Greenpeace admitted the
claims were fraudulent. There was no oil.
(2) A 5-year Rainforest Action-Amazon Watch campaign was
centered around fabricated claims that Occidental Petroleum
planned to drill a well on U’wa Indian lands. The drilling site
was not in rainforests and actually belonged to impoverished
peasants, who welcomed the prospect of jobs and the clinics,
schools, safe water, and other amenities Oxy provided. The
real threat to the U’wa comes from Leftist narco-guerillas,
who were never mentioned in the activists’ attack ads.
Oxy ultimately drilled a dry hole, and the radicals were off on
new crusades.
(3) Amnesty International’s 2004 campaign against Oxy
operations in Ecuador featured a photo of an oil pit and
allegations that the company was “spewing pollution into
the environment.” The same photo had previously been
used by Amazon Watch, to defame Texaco. The actual
operator, it turned out, was state-owned PetroEcuador.
The corrupt Ecuador government later expelled Oxy on
other charges, which the company insists are equally
bogus. Occidental’s departure means millions of dollars
in annual corporate contributions disappeared, says the
Financial Times, and PetroEcuador officials (who
now run the operation) are unlikely to replace them.
“They damage the environment and don’t help local
communities,” one community leader complained.
Another said, “Oxy helped us for 20 years” – with roads,
scholarships, sports facilities, vehicles, and water and
sewage systems – and now the aid is gone.
(4) An antiquated government-operated smelter turned
the Andean community of La Oroya, Peru, into what a
1994 Newsweek article called “a vision from hell.”
In 1997, an American company bought the facility, began
installing modern pollution controls, and launched
numerous civic projects. Several years later, Oxfam and
Christian Aid arrived on the scene, to condemn Doe Run
Peru for “poisoning” the air and water. The mayor and
local people called the activists liars and demonstrated
against them.
(5) In Indonesia, groundless allegations by Friends of the
Earth Indonesia, the New York Times and allies
landed a Newmont Mining executive in jail. He’s charged
with poisoning Buyat Bay and killing a young girl.
However, studies by the World Health Organization and
other reputable analysts point to a more likely cause of
death: water contaminated by human and animal feces.
Meanwhile, mining investment in the country has
plummeted by 93% in just a few years, further
jeopardizing jobs and living standards.
(6) After years of attacking Newman Lumber Company
for “illegally” cutting timber in Peruvian forests, the
Natural Resource Defense Council finally retracted its
false claims. Not once during this time did it even
mention that the real culprits were drug lords, who were
clear-cutting and polluting thousands of acres annually,
to grow coca and process cocaine. Taking them on
could be dangerous.
Attacks on Newmont in Ghana, banks, and dozens of other companies repeat the pattern. In none of these cases did the
“concerned” activists provide financial support to the impoverished towns. Even when Oxy was building an eco-lodge
and Doe Run was constructing public showers for residents who have no running water, the radical environmentalists
contributed nada to the efforts.
The world’s poor are now little more than involuntary pawns – and collateral damage – in the eco-imperialists’ war on
corporations, resource development, and modernization. Millions for attacks – but not one cent for aid -- seems to be the
motto of the radical environmental activists.
The radicals are forcing poor villagers to continue living in mud huts, burning dung, carrying and drinking tainted water,
and battling malarial mosquitoes 24/7/365. But the radical activists are not about to live that way themselves, or limit their
own access to technologies that can support anti-corporate campaigns. And, once they’ve closed down an operation,
they simply head back to their comfortable U.S. or U.K. homes, or find another corporate target, leaving impoverished
locals to pick up the pieces.
Indigenous people, the political environmentalists like to assert, want to live the way their ancestors did. Some certainly
do. But many want to adopt selected modern skills and technologies, to improve and enhance their lives.
“Living like our ancestors is a formula for extinction,” observed Cesar Serasera, leader of a national confederation of
Amazon-Peru natives. To survive, indigenous people need jobs, healthcare, education, better nutrition and safe drinking
water, he said, while holding onto important elements of their culture. Moreover, most of the people impacted by
anti-corporate battles are poor, but not indigenous.
Radical groups – and those who support them – are entitled to promote their ideological agendas. They’re not entitled to
invent “facts,” or pursue their selfish interests at the expense of the poor and powerless.
They need to start behaving like any other big, wealthy, multinational corporation: responsibly, ethically, honestly, and
with concern for both people and the environment. And prospective donors need to begin demanding such behavior,
before they sit down to write checks.
“We will have peace with the Arabs,” Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said, “when they love their children more
than they hate us.” In the realm of environmental politics, there will be justice for the world’s poor when eco-radicals
love people more than they hate corporations and economic development.
© 2006 Paul K. Driessen
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Latin America -- Economics, Politics, Political Regimes,
& Relations with the United States of America:
Problems & Opportunities for the U.S.A.
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, which can be
obtained at www.Eco-Imperialism.com. Email: pdriessen@cox.net --- Telephone:
(703) 698-6171
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