There is an interesting Op-Ed in today's Wall Street Journal on a small town in Romania called Rosia Montana: http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110010500. This town is ravaged by unemployment and poverty, but recently, a large mining company discovered a huge cache of gold underneath it. Not surprisingly, the company wants to mine the gold, which could provide a ton of jobs for the residents of Rosia Montana, but foreign environmentalists, led by George Soros, are opposing the mine.
Look, I am never opposed to environmentalism. I am a recycling freak. However, at what point do we in the West stop having a right to interfere in the lives of people in other countries? The residents of this small, poor town seem to have an economic opportunity before them. Who are we to tell them that they should not take it, or that it should be denied to them? Isn't there just a teensy bit of cultural arrogance in doing that?
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Read local resident of Rosia Montana, Gheorghe Luchian's perspective on his blog Report From Rosia .
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