They extol the virtues of micro credit, to support minimal family enterprises, and demand debt forgiveness and more foreign aid for corrupt dictators – but oppose economic development that would eliminate the need for more international welfare. They blame Newmont Mining for accidents that killed five people over a two-year period in Ghana, but refuse to acknowledge that their policies and pressure campaigns cause millions of deaths every year.

The environmental injustice is prevalent here in the United States, too. A few years ago, the poor, mostly black community of Convent, Louisiana welcomed plans for a $700-million plastics factory that would bring good construction and permanent jobs, health benefits, a stronger tax base and better schools. Over 70% of the residents wanted it. But Sierra Club and a Tulane University group claimed the high-tech plant would pollute and cause cancer.

In fact, cancer rates would have gone down, because residents would have had better nutrition and regular medical check-ups. But the radicals won, the plant wasn’t built, and residents still work menial jobs for minimum wages in sugarcane fields.

Today, the greens’ demand higher energy prices and reduced energy supplies, to prevent global warming. For wealthy families, the impact would barely be noticeable. But low- and fixed-income families would have to spend a far higher portion of their limited budgets on energy and food. Some would likely have to choose between heating and eating – for no detectable environmental gain.

Yes, there are environmental impacts from mines, dams and other development. They change lives and communities. There are health and other risks.

But those changes also came with the Industrial Revolution. Are we worse off for it? Would we prefer to return to the jobs, lifestyles and living standards of pre-industrial, pre-electrical America – when 95% of Americans were farmers, cholera and malaria were ever-present, and the average life expectancy was 45? Are we not able to protect health and the environment with prudent regulations?

Would any of the greens, politicians and celebrities who clamor to keep the world’s poor “indigenous” (and thus impoverished, energy-deprived and diseased) care to live that lifestyle for even one month? Would they exchange their 10,000-square-foot mansions for a Fort Dauphin hovel, give up the blessings of electricity, and stop globe-trotting in private jets?

Why haven’t the UN and its Human Rights Council spoken out about the institutional racism that is being perpetrated in the name of “saving the planet”? Where are the US civil rights groups, news media and churches? The leaders of these poor countries?

This intolerable situation cannot continue, and people of conscience must no longer remain silent.