Mine Your Own Business, a documentary which says it reveals the dark side of environmentalism, was written and produced by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.

They posted a trailer for the film on Youtube which is better known for its amateurish home-produced video clips posted mostly by young people.

However, in less than two months the trailer has been viewed almost 30,000 times and at times has been the centre of an emotional online debate.

Some viewers have posted comments praising it for showing how environmentalists treat the poor - "Thank God someone is exposing these bastards, " one viewer wrote.

Others have attacked it for being simplistic and pro-pollution.

The documentary was part-funded by a mining company - this is revealed in the film - and McAleer says that although the company provided initial funding, it had no editorial control.

"This is the first documentary I have been involved in where the funders had no control over the content. It is, in fact, the most independent documentary I have ever been involved with."

The documentary has outraged many environmentalists and the filmmakers have received two death threats.

Mine Your Own Business shows foreign environmentalists exaggerating and misrepresenting large mining projects because they believe prosperity will ruin the quaint way of life "enjoyed" by the world's poor.

TheWall Street Journal described the documentary as "Michael Moore but without the smug liberal hypocrisy".

McElhinney says they posted the trailer on Youtube as an afterthought not expecting much interest from the youth-orientated network.

"Now we have 30,000 people who have viewed it and we haven't had even been to any film festivals yet."

McElhinney is better known for her journalism and documentary-making on international adoption. She broke the Tristan Dowse story and in an RTة documentary found the child's natural mother, who the Indonesian authorities later reunited with her son.