The Anti-Moore

Coming soon to Review Corner: MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS

I remember a time, not so long ago, when the man with the sandwich board warning the world that the end is nigh was a comic figure. He appeared in cartoons and comedy sketch shows as the clownish, nerdish figure that others made jokes about.

Similarly it is not long ago that the bearded man, with the religious collar and evangelical zeal, warned us to change our ways or we would be visited by plagues and pestilence was viewed as a throwback to a conservative, less sophisticated past.

Most educated westerners feel that no longer believing these spreaders of doom and apocalypse is a sign of progress and how our society has matured.

But remove the glasses and the grubby raincoat from the man with the sandwich board and replace it with an ethnic shirt, maybe a pair of sandals and write on the sandwich board that we are all going to be damned because the oil will run out, Or maybe the message is that we are all going to be doomed because we have cut down the forests or because of global warming and suddenly we take the man with the sandwich board very seriously indeed.

Similarly remove the collar from the man with the evangelical zeal and make him a member of an environmental organisation and suddenly we start paying serious attention to these modern day prophets of doom.

Once, according to our religious leaders, it was our sins that were leading us to damnation. Now, according to our environmental leaders, it is polluting actions of man that will lead to our damnation.

That is from a director's statement by Phelim McAleer, who has created a documentary about unemployed Romanian coal miner Gheorge Lucian

OpinionJournal Political Diary's John Fund describes the film as an anti-Michael Moore look at leftist idealism:

In it, Mr. Lucian, the Romanian miner, is seen hop-scotching around the globe confronting environmentalists in the style of Mr. Moore with the real-world consequences of their ideology.

He finds plenty of pincushions to stick needles into. Belgian environmentalist Francoise Heidebroek pompously tells Mr. Lucian that he and his fellow Romanian villagers prefer to use horses rather than cars, and to rely on "traditional cattle raising, small agriculture, wood processing" to live. In Madagascar, Mr. Lucian finds an official of the World Wide Fund for Nature who argues that the poor are just as happy as the rich and then insists on showing Mr. Lucian his new $50,000 catamaran.

You can order the film off the website for $12.95 with PayPal.

Environment Posted by jk at October 6, 2006 1:44 PM