There are many adverse campaigns of environmental activism in politics. Naturally climate change is paramount simply because of the funding and notoriety it receives, but second and third is forestry and mining. Forestry is most likely second, since it is significantly more visible to the average person.
Relative to the deceptive workings of climate change, trees are said to absorb carbon dioxide, but it is mining that provides the raw materials for the manufacture of alternative renewable energies. Paradoxically though, the decision for the approval of mining permits often arrives from the political pens of those environmentally opposed.
Early in February of this year, I wrote about the federal cancellation of permits and mining leases for copper in the Maturi Deposit in a geological area known as the Duluth complex. This is an area between Ely and Babbitt in northern Minnesota and a historic producer of copper.
Yet, linked we have an article from S&P Global, formerly McGraw Hill, an international company engaged in financial information and analytics, that states a deficiency of copper negates any chance of meeting the 2050 net-zero goals set by these same eco-politicians and green bureaucrats.
Nonetheless, the greens will go full steam ahead for yet another failure with extreme hardship and privation unjustly served on the citizens of the world.
As a result of the increased need for copper under the carbon dioxide reduction programs being set forth by progressive climate policies, even mines opening today will not produce enough copper to coincide with the growing demand. Other major ingredients in the current production of batteries, especially for electric vehicles (EV), cobalt and lithium seem to be in relatively good supply in North America, but as evidenced by progressive governmental policy, mining permits in both the United States and Canada are getting very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to secure.
Manufacturers then turn to China for their supplies – China currently controls 50% of mined cobalt, a large percentage coming from insensitive child labor in the dirt and filth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As promises of regulatory action constantly fail, young children, making pittance, die or are maimed, in these unsanitary mines and hazardous conditions.
Furthermore, China has or controls the majority of the world’s rare earth minerals. As the progressive politicians of the world push for more and more restraints on energy production, China the world’s largest contributor of carbon and carbon dioxide will most certainly be immorally compensated as they begin to secure the dominant global currency.
Gravitas Plus of India presents a cinematic view of the mining conditions of the Congo as well as the slave miners used by the inhumane and merciless Chinese government, which I link here.