The Environmental movement has brought many benefits to Seattle and the Northwest. Asking people to stop and think about the consequences of their actions has made the region a much more pleasant place to live.

But in doing research for my new documentary, “Mine Your Own Business,” I have uncovered a dark side to the environmental movement which has made me rethink my faith in the green movement.

Until recently I was a true believer. As a liberal European journalist my heart has always automatically sympathized with the small community groups and environmentalists who were campaigning against governments or large corporations that were “destroying the environment” in remote locations.

Then I was lucky enough to have to go and live in one of those remote locations -- and found that the story being spun by environmentalists was often wrong, distorted by looking at the world through the lens of a cruel ideology that would condemn millions to grinding poverty.

I am still an environmentalist but it looks like many in the environmental movement have gone down a road I cannot follow.

My admiration for environmentalists started to decline when I was posted to Romania as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times newspaper. There I covered a campaign led by western environmentalists against a proposed mine at Rosia Montana in the Transylvania region of the country.

It was the usual story. The environmentalists told how Gabriel Resources, a Canadian mining company, was going to pollute the environment and forcibly resettle locals before destroying a pristine wilderness.

But when I went to see the village for myself I found that almost everything the campaigners were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated or quite simply false.

Rosia Montana was already a heavily polluted village because of the 2000 years of uncontrolled mining in the area. The new mining company actually planned to use modern methods to clean up the existing mess.

Opposing the new mine would be like opposing a Canadian company from taking over and reopening a rusting factory in a decaying US city. Local people would welcome the clean-up, and new technology and jobs the investment would bring. And it is no different in this impoverished and highly polluted part of Romania.

But the environmentalists never pointed this out. They lied about support for the project and pretended there was widespread local opposition.

The environmentalists also gathered huge media coverage because of the planned forced resettlement.

This was simply a bare faced lie.

The locals, rather than being forcibly resettled as the environmentalists claimed, were queuing up to sell their decrepit houses to the company, which was paying well over the market rate.

It was surprising that environmentalists would lie, but the most shocking part was yet to come. As I spoke to the foreign environmentalists it quickly emerged that they wanted to stop the mine because they felt that development and prosperity will ruin the rural “idyllic” lifestyle of these happy peasants.

This ‘lifestyle’ includes 70% unemployment, two thirds of the people having no running water and using an outhouse in winters where the temperature can plummet to -20 centigrade.

One environmentalist (foreign of course) tried to convince me that villagers actually preferred riding a horse and cart to driving a car.

Of course the Rosia Montana villagers want a modern life – just like the rest of us. They want good schools and medical care that the large investment would bring. And maybe an indoor bathroom as well.

When I left the Financial Times to make documentaries, the plight of these villagers never really left me. I have come across a lot of tragedies and hard luck stories as a journalist, but I had never covered a situation where the solution to poverty is being opposed by educated westerners who think that people really are “poor but happy.”

When a representative of Gabriel Resources asked me to write a brochure about the project I declined but I did suggest that if they did not interfere editorially I would make a documentary.

I gathered up extra funding and the result is the documentary “Mine Your Own Business.” The film will shock and upset those who, like myself, unquestioningly believed environmentalists are a force for good in the world.

For “Mine your Own Business” I started looking beyond Romania and found a similar pattern in very different villages in Africa and South America.

The real battle, I discovered, is not between western environmentalists and mining companies but between environmentalists and some of the world’s poorest people. In the film, educated westerners living in these countries explained to me, in all seriousness, that the locals don’t want better food, houses or schools for their children.

The locals, not surprisingly, strongly disagreed. As a liberal journalist I had always viewed foreigners who go to the developing world and tell locals how they should live and work as colonialists. As such they should be opposed at every juncture. But now environmentalists are doing the very same -- and many of us are blindly supporting them as they campaign to keep people in poverty.

It is sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development.

However, it is not only sad but tragic that the real losers in this backlash are some of the poorest people on the planet.

Phelim McAleer is an Irish-born journalist and documentary maker. His new film, Mine Your Own Business, will be discussed at the annual luncheon for the Center for Environmental Policy at the Washington Policy Center. You can view the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wth_p4p0rfY

You can find out more about the film at www.mineyourownbusiness.org