Phelim McAleer

Phelim McAleer
Born	Beragh, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Occupation	Speaker, filmmaker, journalist
Known for	global warming, journalism and film-making
Notable work(s)	Not Evil Just Wrong, Mine Your Own Business, and The Search for Tristan's Mum
Spouse	Ann McElhinney

Phelim McAleer (4 April 1967) is an Irish journalist and documentary filmmaker. He has written and produced Not Evil Just Wrong and Mine Your Own Business, as well as The Search for Tristan's Mom and Return to Sender. McAleer grew up in Northern Ireland and is married to fellow documentary-maker and journalist Ann McElhinney.

Films

Not Evil Just Wrong

Not Evil Just Wrong is a documentary film McAleer and his wife Ann McElhinney directed and produced to challenge Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. It suggests that the evidence for global warming is inconclusive, and that the impact global warming legislation will have on industry is much more harmful to humans than beneficial. The movie was filmed in 2008, and was screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and at the Right Online conference in 2009.

Mine Your Own Business

Mine Your Own Business is a documentary that looked at campaigns by foreign environmentalists against a large-scale mining project in Romania. McAleer agreed to film the documentary, funded by the Canadian Mining Company featured in the movie, after the company guaranteed that he and wife would retain creative control over its content. McAleer said of his findings during the shoot:

It was surprising that environmentalists would lie, but the most shocking part was yet to come. As I spoke to the Western 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-percent unemployment, two-thirds of the people having no running water and using an outhouse in winters where the temperature can plummet to 20 degrees below zero centigrade.

When the documentary was reviewed by environmentalists it was compared to pornography and Nazi propaganda.^{[citation needed]} Eighty environmental organisations tried to have National Geographic cancel a screening at the organisation's headquarters in 2006.^{[citation needed]}

The Search for Tristan's Mum

McAleer wrote and produced "The Search for Tristan's Mum," which highlighted the case of a toddler Tristan Dowse, who was adopted by an Irish couple at birth and then abandoned in an Indonesian orphanage two years later. It broadcast on RTÉ 1, the Irish state television station, in 2005.

This film was later selected to be screened at Input 2006, a showcase for programs from national public broadcasters, world-wide. It was selected by industry professionals and screened at Input 2006 in Taiwan in May 2006.

Journalism

McAleer, a former student of the NCTJ course at the Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education, began his journalism career by accepting a position at the Crossmaglen Examiner a local Northern Ireland newspaper in Co. Armagh, an area where the IRA operated. McAleer then moved to Northern Ireland's largest-selling daily, the Irish News, in Belfast. There he covered the Northern Ireland troubles and peace process, before becoming night editor.

McAleer has also written for The Economist. Previously, from 1998 to 2000, he worked for the UK Sunday Times in its Dublin office. From 2000 to 2003 he was the Romania/Bulgaria Correspondent for the Financial Times. It was this position that ultimately led him to filming documentaries.

Global Warming coverage

2010

In October 2010, film director James Cameron donated $1 million to oppose California's Prop 23, which would have overturned AB 32—California's climate change mitigation proposition. In response to this donation, McAleer and McElhinney made a short film alleging that passage of AB 32 would increase energy costs, and that Cameron, who'd been quoted as saying "we are going to have to live with less," in fact lived with more than do most Americans. The Independent declared that:

“

In the current economic climate, knocking the lifestyles of the rich and famous is likely to strike a chord. And given the brouhaha that greeted revelations about Al Gore's carbon footprint, the makers of "James Cameron – Hypocrite", who in 2009 produced a contentious documentary disputing climate change called Not Evil Just Wrong, may be tapping a rich rhetorical vein...[but ] conveniently ignores the fact that Cameron pays to off-set his personal carbon emissions

”

McAleer participated in two debates hosted by Lexus, called the "Darker Side of Green." The first took place in New York City, and was hosted by Sarah Silverman; the second debate was in Hollywood, where Andy Samberg hosted.

In May, Al Gore became the third person in history to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Tennessee. McAleer attended a protest of the ceremony. Around 100 people attended the protest, including people from CFACT, the Knoxville Tea Party, and the Tennessee Liberty Alliance. During the protest, McAleer dressed up as a polar bear, asking Gore to debate him; he also hired a plane to fly around the ceremony with a banner that read, "Mr. Gore, why are you sending jobs to China?"

McAleer attended the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009. While there he attended a press conference for Stanford Professor Stephen Schneider regarding the leaked emails from Climatic Research Unit (CRU) center.

The other film was called Phil and me, and starred McAleer—dressed up as a polar bear and attempting to get an interview with Phil Jones, the director of the CRU. While McAleer was interviewing Neil Cavuto about the project, an attendee at Copenhagen threw vegetables at him—and hit him on the head.

2009

McAleer attended a press conference held by the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) to interview Al Gore, once of his first in four years. He asked Gore about the 9 errors found in An Inconvenient Truth and if he had any plans to correct them, since the film is still shown in schools. Gore replied:

Well, I'm not going to go through all of those. The ruling was in favor of the movie by the way and the ruling was in favor of showing the movie in schools. And that's really the bottom line on that. There's been such a long discussion of each one of those specific things. One of them, for example, was that polar bears if I remember correctly, it's been a long time ago, that polar bears really aren't endangered. Well, polar bears didn't get that word.

McAleer countered that polar bear numbers had actually increased. Shortly afterward, his microphone was turned off by members of the SEJ. The SEJ has maintained that McAleer's mic was cut off due to him exceeding his time limit. McAleer has publicly disagreed, saying it was censorship. "Environmental journalists unfortunately tend to be environmentalists rather than journalists," he added. "They have never found an environmental organization that's ever exaggerated, that's ever told a lie, and there is. ... I want environmental journalists to actually ask them difficult questions. It's not an awful request."

Earlier, McAleer attended the New York City premiere of The Age of Stupid. Later, McAleer told the Irish News that the film should have been called the "Age of Hypocrisy."

External links

• Not Evil Just Wrong, Bio of Phelim McAleer
• Phelim McAleer, Twitter