Boundary Waters Situation

Thehillbillee said:
Thanks for all the info. You’re clearly very informed on this issue. (More so than I am anyway.)


Does this mean conservationists pushed for foreign involvement directly, or just demanded more regulation and enforcement to protect the environments in and adjacent to the locations of these minerals and the facilities they were being processed? If its the former I’d like to see more info to back that up. If it’s the latter I don’t think you can blame conservationists.

Or are you saying conservationists are big pushers of wind, solar, Ev’s? (This has not been my experience, but even if it were true I don’t see how this puts any blame on them for the foreign involvement.)


I’m not saying these minerals aren’t critical. I think they are. I’m saying that it doesn’t help our national security to let them be taken from our possession and sent to a nation that is one of our biggest national security threats.
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The conservation and environmental movements in the West had worthy goals at the outset, but the Soviets also funded them as a means of attacking the West. This is particularly true of amplifying the anti-nuclear power hysteria in the 1970s and 1980s.

Similarly, our overseas opponents cheered while globalist businessmen sold off our industrial base and moved production to foreign and hostile governments. Often to countries that were willing to let those businesses pollute or exploit labor without concern for the “externalities.”

It’s not so much that conservationists and environmentalists wanted to see our country dismantle its industrial base or that they were complicit with our enemies. It’s that you can’t have environmental standards apply in only one part of the world without some form of protections (like tariffs). Just as you can’t have labor protections without some form of protections (like tariffs). Which, of course, goes against the free trade ideology.

The money our adversaries spent pushing policies that are bad for our national security were relatively paltry, but highly effective.

The absurdity that somehow the whole world is better off with all the industry done in China and other countries with no environmental or labor standards is patent to anyone.

And letting a Chilean company mine minerals here to take them to China to smelt them in the name of protecting our supply chains and national security is beyond absurd.
 
Q_Sertorius said:
The conservation and environmental movements in the West had worthy goals at the outset, but the Soviets also funded them as a means of attacking the West. This is particularly true of amplifying the anti-nuclear power hysteria in the 1970s and 1980s.

Similarly, our overseas opponents cheered while globalist businessmen sold off our industrial base and moved production to foreign and hostile governments. Often to countries that were willing to let those businesses pollute or exploit labor without concern for the “externalities.”

It’s not so much that conservationists and environmentalists wanted to see our country dismantle its industrial base or that they were complicit with our enemies. It’s that you can’t have environmental standards apply in only one part of the world without some form of protections (like tariffs). Just as you can’t have labor protections without some form of protections (like tariffs). Which, of course, goes against the free trade ideology.

The money our adversaries spent pushing policies that are bad for our national security were relatively paltry, but highly effective.

The absurdity that somehow the whole world is better off with all the industry done in China and other countries with no environmental or labor standards is patent to anyone.

And letting a Chilean company mine minerals here to take them to China to smelt them in the name of protecting our supply chains and national security is beyond absurd.
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This.

Natural resource independence, whether that be oil, minerals, or metals, is a massive National Security issue. Anyone who can’t see that is woefully ignorant of reality.

However the plan for this particular mine does nothing to address that problem.


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Yes, we have a problem in that we are dependent on raw materials--hyper clear. Entirely true that we have created this situation by allowing ourselves to externalize environmental costs by offshoring them. Regardless of whether that was done right or done wrong, it's clearly for a good reason--I think most folks here are too young to remember, but it was in my lifetime that major rivers in the US would literally catch on fire routinely, and it was actually legitimately a health problem to eat fish out of many of those rivers, or even swim in them. The office I'm working from this minute (well, "working"...) is about 300 yards away from a superfund site caused by LEGALLY dumping PCB's. The major environmental restrictions we have are almost entirely bipartisan and were a direct response to these disasters. Shifting baselines are a thing, becasue I dare say anyone that had personal visibility on that doesnt want a repeat. BUT it's clear that simply offshoring the damage--regardless of whether thats from logging or manufacturing or mining--isnt the solution.
We do need to own our own resources as much as possible, and that includes the damage that inevitably causes; the only way I see to do that is to invest in our own capacity to manage it here in a cleaner way than has been done in the past. Part of the issue in this case is that this is coupled simulataneously with rolling back environmental protections and de-funding and politicizing the regulatory agencies charged with overseeing an operation like this. What I see does not point to "lets do this and do it cleanly becasue it makes us more secure", it's much closer to "lets do this at any cost regardless of what that cost could be, even if it is out of our control and the security aspect is overstated".
 
Thehillbillee said:
Thanks for all the info. You’re clearly very informed on this issue. (More so than I am anyway.)


Does this mean conservationists pushed for foreign involvement directly, or just demanded more regulation and enforcement to protect the environments in and adjacent to the locations of these minerals and the facilities they were being processed? If its the former I’d like to see more info to back that up. If it’s the latter I don’t think you can blame conservationists.

Or are you saying conservationists are big pushers of wind, solar, Ev’s? (This has not been my experience, but even if it were true I don’t see how this puts any blame on them for the foreign involvement.)


I’m not saying these minerals aren’t critical. I think they are. I’m saying that it doesn’t help our national security to let them be taken from our possession and sent to a nation that is one of our biggest national security threats.
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First, i am hardly a mining expert. Its pretty obvious there is a lack of anything close to any expert in this thread.

Second, the largest conservation organizations in the country (and world) are absolutely some of the biggest pushers and lobbyists for renewable Net Zero policy. National Wildlife Federation, Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society, Sitka's Parent Company, The Mars Foundation, Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and many many other progressive and globally oriented conservation organizations have been some of the primary drivers and lobbyists for net zero policy. The connection between growth of renewable energy and climate change initiatives such as net zero is indisputable. As is detailed in nearly every government report on mineral supply and demand, renewable energy development and product production is one of or the largest consumers of those critical minerals.

At the same time, many of those same conservation and environmental organization have aggressively lobby for anti fossil fuel measures. Between 2000 and 2020 (roughly), we have seen drastic closure, bankruptcy, and reduction in work force amongst the mining sector, mainly coal mining. Many of those assets sold. Many of those companies defunct. I can tell you there was a definite change around 2021 or so. Professional organizations switched from petroleum subject matter to mining again. Trouble is a lot of US mining companies went tits up. You don't just start up a mining company, get thrown a bunch of capital, and suddenly have permits to mine. These mines on federal land have been in the works for like a decade or more. Like the Critical Minerals document I linked said, we all want fully USA based companies with US based supply chains. Thats not reality in the global market so we are going to need alterative supply chains. You can either enter the global market and have a cellphone and electricity or you can howl at the moon about how everything is bad while use a cup with a string attached. Maybe in 10 years we will have more domestic supply chains and mining companies.

And the way people are talking is not how the global supply chain works. The mine will have a long term contract with a company to take and smelt these goods with a buyer in place. The same as every other mine in the US. If you don't like it, just give this company their money back in addition to 100s of millions in damages. It turns out just seizing a companies assets after they have put a lot of investor money into them is a costly legal endeavor.

Lastly, Everyone can see what is occurring with the national security argument crowd. People don't want the mine so they are wildly grabbing onto any argument they can to stop it. Most of the people talking about muh national security dont care about national security or supply chains.
 
@CJ19 couple thoughts. I do appreciate the post, just a couple spots where I have a thought or familiarity with one aspect of this and could use some clarification.

Your list of orgs is NOT a list of conservation orgs. Your list includes both environmentally focused conservation orgs, as well as outright preservation orgs. That is two very different things. The list includes both orgs that actively work with industry becasue they recognize this exact problem, ie that we need resources and that offshoring the damage isnt a solution; as well as orgs that dont recognize that. At least one org on your list literally owns hundreds of thousands of acres of land that they manage for extraction in various forms. Even though it may be a tangent I think that's important to note--your group of orgs may be addressing some of the same environmental problems, but it includes a massive range of approaches to this exact issue that imo doesnt warrant lumping them together especially in the context of this topic.

You mentioned that it would be expensive to reimburse a company for their investment. I'm not clear what stage of the process you are referring to—are you saying some company already has permitted rights to a mine, even though there had already been a moratorium in place? But also my question back is, what is the dollar-value of the boundary waters? If a mine runoff spill were to happen in the future, and pollutes the watershed, what would the cleanup cost borne by the public be, and what will the cost be to the area in lost revenue and lost value (the estimates I read were that the economic impact of tourism to the BWCA was already pushing $100million per year)? My guess is "hundreds of millions" could be by far the cheaper option compared to some of those numbers. Part of the problem is that what is LOST to a spill or degradation from industry in terms of environment has always been, and continues to be, woefully undervalued. Especially when the list of places that are still relatively pristine is not large. Scarcity drives value up—BWCA’s are pretty scarce.


CJ19 said:
Everyone can see what is occurring with the national security argument crowd. People don't want the mine so they are wildly grabbing onto any argument they can to stop it. Most of the people talking about muh national security do care about national security or supply chains.
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This is not clear to me. Do you mean "most people talking about national security DO care about national security...or DONT care about national security? The point is that national security was the actual justification for using the congressional review act to rescind the moratoriumon on mining, but since we'd be sending ore to china it certainly doesnt appear to make us more secure--the whole issue with the security in the first place is that we DONT want to be beholden to China. Can you clarify what you are saying?

CJ19 said:
The mine will have a long term contract with a company to take and smelt these goods with a buyer in place. The same as every other mine in the US. If you don't like it, just give this company their money back in addition to 100s of millions in damages. It turns out just seizing a companies assets after they have put a lot of investor money into them is a costly legal endeavor.
Click to expand...
can you explain what you mean? are you saying that the US will retain ownership of the ore, a chilean company will mine it for us, and they will send to a chinese smelter to process the ore, and our allotment will then come directly back to us? If so that is very different than how most supply chains I am familiar with work. What I'm familiar with is more like a commodity market--take milk as an example. A farmer sells milk to a processor. The processor combines the raw milk from dozens or hundreds of farms, finishes and bottles it, and sells it all mixed up to grocery stores on an open market. So if the farmer wants milk he buys it from the grocery store, but it's not "his" milk, it is all of the mixed up milk from all of the farms that he then buys at whatever the retail price of milk is, becasue he is competing with every other consumer of milk on an open market. Does mining work differently than such a market? Even if there is an agreement in place, what recourse is there if a chinese smelter gets siezed by the chinese government or they simply forbid shipping any of the processed material to the US? From a security standpoint I just dont see the advantage or the security in literally sending the "critical material" to an antagonistic place regardless of what agreements are in place, especially when its the specific place that we're trying to be less dependent on.

And regardless of any of this, the implications of rescinding the moratorium in this particular way--via the congressional review act which creates specific legal barriers around this topic in the future--still needs to be addressed. Even if we say that mining needs to happen here in the US, and that until we have our own start to finish processing capacity we still have to allow mining to continue, my understanding is that the "substantially similar" language in the congressional review act will make it much harder to strategically locate and manage any mines in a responsible way in the future. I'd really like to hear what those advocating for this being a good thing have to say about this aspect.
 
Macintosh said:
@CJ19 couple thoughts. I do appreciate the post, just a couple spots where I have a thought or familiarity with one aspect of this and could use some clarification.

Your list of orgs is NOT a list of conservation orgs. Your list includes both environmentally focused conservation orgs, as well as outright preservation orgs. That it two very different things. The list includes both orgs that actively work with industry becasue they recognize this exact problem, ie that we need resources and that offshoring the damage isnt a solution; as well as orgs that dont recognize that. At least one org on your list literally owns hundreds of thousands of acres of land that they manage for extraction in various forms. Even though it may be a tangent I think that's important to note--your group of orgs may be addressing some of the same environmental problems, but it includes a massive range of approaches to this exact issue that imo doesnt warrant lumping them together especially in the context of this topic.
Click to expand...

TNC, Wilderness Society, NWF are all considered conservation organizations. Which organization I listed isn't a conservation organization? Earthjustice? Sierra Club? sure i put them in their to show the range of progressive organizations on the same team on net zero. There are many progressive conservation organizations that have been pushing for and lobbied for net zero and other aggressive renewable develop. in fact, if you were to listed the large conservation organizations in the country most of them would be on the "Have Lobbied For Net Zero" list. And very few if any have come out and said, "nah. net zero is bad policy for public land users and hunters."

rest of the stuff ill have to answer later
 
Macintosh said:
@CJ19 couple thoughts. I do appreciate the post, just a couple spots where I have a thought or familiarity with one aspect of this and could use some clarification.




You mentioned that it would be expensive to reimburse a company for their investment. I'm not clear what stage of the process you are referring to—are you saying some company already has permitted rights to a mine, even though there had already been a moratorium in place? But also my question back is, what is the dollar-value of the boundary waters? If a mine runoff spill were to happen in the future, and pollutes the watershed, what would the cleanup cost borne by the public be, and what will the cost be to the area in lost revenue and lost value (the estimates I read were that the economic impact of tourism to the BWCA was already pushing $100million per year)? My guess is "hundreds of millions" could be by far the cheaper option compared to some of those numbers. Part of the problem is that what is LOST to a spill or degradation from industry in terms of environment has always been, and continues to be, woefully undervalued. Especially when the list of places that are still relatively pristine is not large. Scarcity drives value up—BWCA’s are pretty scarce.
Click to expand...

please spare me the "how much is the boundary waters worth" conversation. Yes, i know Bob and Bob's bait makes money off selling fishing tackle to travelers etc etc. No one is denying natural resources have direct and indirect financial value. The point is some entity has a legal financial interest in the mineral resources. Nobody wants to have ownership of something and invest a lot of money into something and then have a competing interest come along and tell them they can realize that investment. The problem many people have is that the crowd that is upset about the boundary waters, get upset at virtually every extraction project like its the final boss of environmental issues gross exaggerations and all. So now that it is time to protect a truly unique resource and a lot of people are like "o, this again."

Macintosh said:
@CJ19 couple thoughts. I do appreciate the post, just a couple spots where I have a thought or familiarity with one aspect of this and could use some clarification.





This is not clear to me. Do you mean "most people talking about national security DO care about national security...or DONT care about national security? The point is that national security was the actual justification for using the congressional review act to rescind the moratoriumon on mining, but since we'd be sending ore to china it certainly doesnt appear to make us more secure--the whole issue with the security in the first place is that we DONT want to be beholden to China. Can you clarify what you are saying?


can you explain what you mean? are you saying that the US will retain ownership of the ore, a chilean company will mine it for us, and they will send to a chinese smelter to process the ore, and our allotment will then come directly back to us? If so that is very different than how most supply chains I am familiar with work. What I'm familiar with is more like a commodity market--take milk as an example. A farmer sells milk to a processor. The processor combines the raw milk from dozens or hundreds of farms, finishes and bottles it, and sells it all mixed up to grocery stores on an open market. So if the farmer wants milk he buys it from the grocery store, but it's not "his" milk, it is all of the mixed up milk from all of the farms that he then buys at whatever the retail price of milk is, becasue he is competing with every other consumer of milk on an open market. Does mining work differently than such a market? Even if there is an agreement in place, what recourse is there if a chinese smelter gets siezed by the chinese government or they simply forbid shipping any of the processed material to the US? From a security standpoint I just dont see the advantage or the security in literally sending the "critical material" to an antagonistic place regardless of what agreements are in place, especially when its the specific place that we're trying to be less dependent on.

And regardless of any of this, the implications of rescinding the moratorium in this particular way--via the congressional review act which creates specific legal barriers around this topic in the future--still needs to be addressed. Even if we say that mining needs to happen here in the US, and that until we have our own start to finish processing capacity we still have to allow mining to continue, my understanding is that the "substantially similar" language in the congressional review act will make it much harder to strategically locate and manage any mines in a responsible way in the future. I'd really like to hear what those advocating for this being a good thing have to say about this aspect.
Click to expand...

I have no idea about the milk analogy you are trying to make. I am not sure about the large paragraph either.

As far as the rest. My understanding is that the mine does some basic processing of the ore then sends it to the smelter who buys it per their contract. Smelter smelts then sells on to who needs it.

It is a global supply chain for a lot of these minerals. There is no capacity in the US to process it. Increasing supply streams increases the ability of critical minerals reaching market in the US. Is as good as having an entire US supply chain? No. It is increasing availability of these minerals for other segments of the economy and supply chain? yes. Does this mine make us less beholden to china? Yes. Is the smelter in China still a potential bottleneck in the supply chain? yes. Personally, I find the boundary waters mine objectionable for environmental reasons unique to the project. The supply chain issues with minerals are not really unique to this project as far as I understand it.
 
I’m not sure why you’re lumping all of us together. I’m not in favor of this mine in particular because of its proximity to the boundary waters. That doesn’t mean I’m not ok with all mines. There’s mining in the black hills (a place that’s very near and dear to me), and I accept that. I’ve never foamed at the mouth to fight it.

It is important to not to lump all conservation/environmental groups together. On some issues we’re allies, on many others we aren’t. There way too broad a spectrum to lump them all together. I also think you can support clean energy and oppose mining in the watershed of the boundary waters.

I only bring up the national security thing because that’s the only justification I’ve been able to find as to why the risks of the mine are justified. As I’ve explained already above, that justification doesn’t pass the sniff test for me.

Look, maybe we do really need this mine, but I haven’t been able to find anything yet that convinces me we do. I do think the US should reinvest in mining and processing of the ore. That means training engineers and scientists and investing money to develop new technologies for doing it with minimal environmental impacts. If we do that too in the next decades, and if government regulators do their jobs, and if twin metals does their job responsibly, this could all work out. I think it probably could with very careful attention.

Trouble is, my default position is that I don’t trust that the government will do a good job regulating it and that twin metals won’t take shortcuts and make compromises so as to help their bottom line.
 
Dos Perros said:
If there is one thing I know to be true, it’s that in order to help people see logic and reason they should first be insulted. You know, set the mood.
Click to expand...

Call a spade, a spade. How else are they to know the truth? Hows that saying go referring to over-denial revealing guilt?

“Me thinks thou dost protest too much”

“The truth hurts”

“Throw a stone into a pack of tribal cucks and the one who yelps is the one who got hit”
 
Dos Perros said:
If there is one thing I know to be true, it’s that in order to help people see logic and reason they should first be insulted. You know, set the mood.
Click to expand...
But it's very effective in "internet tough guy" circles.

As to the topic, I think both things can be true, we need access to minerals AND some places are not appropriate for mineral development. It's always going to be a balance, without the black/white clarity as required in facebook "debates" but that's a burden that we'll just have to learn to live with.
 
CJ19 said:
I am lumping the conservation community together because the largest and most influential members of the conservation community unanimously agree about climate policy and virtually every other small conservation organization has some mealy mouth response to renewable policy to avoid angering the influence makers in the industry. And the "we can support clean energy and oppose this mine" stance is the exact policy of literally EVERY conservation org. So saying they are not the same is a bit ironic.

You have people in the thread talking about physically protesting and people should be lined up and executed which I would say qualifies as outraged so perhaps you are not but the community collectively most definitely get outraged at most extraction things.

And this statement "Look, maybe we do really need this mine, but I haven’t been able to find anything yet that convinces me we do. I do think the US should reinvest in mining and processing of the ore."

I linked a comprehensive source from the DoE on that exact subject that has been in the works for decades across multiple administrations. People in the public hunting forum community drone on about we need science...we need science based decisions....we need more funding for science.... well here it is, the science on the mineral demand from a govt funded agency. This is the link to the Department of Energy's critical mineral program which outlines the need for some of the exact minerals the mine we are discussing is targeting. You say you support clean energy ... thats good because here is the first line of the 2023 summary for that update report:


"The global effort to curb carbon emissions is accelerating demand for clean energy technologies and the materials they rely on. Demand for these materials will only continue to grow, especially as some nations aim to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050."

The report seems pretty clear about the need to mine minerals to me.

-----


On a side note. I am absolutely dying with the irony of the HT crew coming over here talking about cucks. Do me a favor guys. Get Randy to ask a single hard question to Martin Heinrich next time he has him in for a segment. Heres an idea.

"Hey Senator Heinrich, you and I are both really outraged about this MN mine thing. Since you take more money than just about anyone in congress from the renewable and electrical lobbies, can you pressure renewable manufactures and generators that are buying all the mineral products these mines produce to kill some of these environmentally deleterious mines like Twin Metals and the one in AK?"
Click to expand...
Have you ever disagreed with anything this administration has ever done?


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