Mining Responsibly
I just finished reading this article from Business North, and immediately thought you would appreciate seeing this recent development following our LSBF efforts so many years ago. The mention of “responsible” mining in the second paragraph should be enough to encourage reading what follows. MiningMinnesota, a trade advocacy group based in the arrowhead region of Minnesota’s Iron Range, has announced a new Executive Director to replace Frank Ongaro, who energetically supported the mining industry’s interests. Although iron and taconite continue as important extractive work, a more recent and contentious initiative is copper-nickle mining and processing. That the new Executive Director, Julie Lucas, holds a graduate degree emphasizing water quality, should portend a shifting of policy toward environmental values. Yet the very notion of “responsible mining” is an oxymoron. Extractive industries are not, almost by definition, sustainable.
In the early part of the last decade, the Lake Superior Binational Forum, led by ecologist and environmental historian Nancy Langston, PhD, circulated a paper on “Responsible Mining.” The paper recognized that for mining to be responsible, it must meet several system conditions that are actually untenable, and probably unprofitable, for extractive industries. One critical “responsible” condition is related to water quality. Copper-nickle, aka sulfate mining, is mostly inimical to water quality unless legally severe, technically complex and very expensive steps are taken to prevnt sulfate runoff from the sites of mining operations. That there remains environmentally dangerous uncertainties should dictate that large financial reserves be set aside for potential environmental disasters that may occur and for the eventual termination of mining operations and reclamation of mining lands. These reserves are expensive and eat into profit margins. The result is a long standing dispute over permitting new mining operations.
The Minnesota mining industry seems incorrigible and seems unwilling to see that a sustainable future is only to be built on a decline in extraction and the development of a circular economy. The linear economy of the past has followed a framework of take, make waste. The circular economy simply means that waste must be transformed into resources for remaking products and all materials be reused. This mostly entails a new approach to manufacturing, which assumes that every product will be reclaimed for future use. The Natural Resources Research Institute in Duluth is beginning to see the way forward with mining and recycling of electronic waste. A ton of Electronic waste is estimated to contain gold many times the gold in a ton of rock from a gold mine. And, electronic waste holds a bonus of other precious metals.
Our planetary imperative calls all of us to continue supporting an ecology of education that provides content, critical theory, comment and dialogic teaching to advance the Lake Superior Binational Forum’s vision that began “Water is Life … ” Responsible mining and recycling cannot ignore the contribution of water quality to quality of all life on earth. The late Native American activist,Walt Bresette, famously said “Water is more precious than gold.” We continue to look toward a sustainable future where anyone can contribute to stewardship of the wealth of nature. Everyone should be constantly reminded, as Gaylord Nelson reminded us, The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment
Though I miss living in the Lake Superior basin, the visions and messages of environmental stewardship that LSBF advanced have global relevance. Think globally, interact regionally and learn locally. A critical first step for learning is asking questions. If education is a path to freedom, then thinking freely begins with skepticism and a commitment to the future in which humans are fully integrated with the life sustaining conditions on earth. That is, it seems to me, imperative.