Copper, gold, granite, and nickel. Potash and titanium and lithium. Silver, sand, and salt.
The United States is full of useful stuff to mine, and with sound (if not excessive) regulations in place at all levels of government, profit-seeking entities should be allowed to go get it.
Even the Biden administration — seriously — claims to back “environmentally responsible domestic mining.” Given the White House’s dismal approval rating on economic affairs, it’s easy to understand why. In 2021, miners outside the oil-and-gas sector earned an average annual wage of $85,668.
But the Land of the Free no longer values the march of industrial progress. Happy to enjoy the many benefits rocks and metals offer, Americans aren’t keen on having a mine or two anywhere near their domiciles. And they’re disturbingly susceptible to professional alarmists’ rantings about the hazards of mines in remote regions.
Take the plan to tap “the country’s largest lithium deposit.” In 2020, Nevada’s Democratic governor “approved $8.5 million in tax abatements for … a Canadian company that intends to mine tens of thousands of tons of … the key component in electric vehicle batteries.” Sorry, but the project’s greenness does not provide inoculation — last year, “a coalition of conservation and public accountability groups filed federal litigation … challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine.” (The plaintiffs “support reasonable renewable energy and battery storage,” of course, but “not at this cost to the environment and local communities.”)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to No Dowd About It to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.