Tag Archives: Green Right

A Piece of Legislative Mischief

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Something else worth noting happens toward the end of this video clip, when Stauber tries to plant a green flag. “If you are at all serious about emissions reductions, you will vote to support H.R. 1. We need to pass H.R. 1 for energy independence and critical mineral dominance.”

There has already been plenty of commentary around the misleading claim that this bill would reduce emissions. Common Dreams published a pretty good rundown. Opponents have labeled H.R. 1 the Polluters Over People Act; the Center for Western Priorities notes that it would reverse many of the Inflation Reduction Act’s reforms to the onshore oil and gas leasing program; and as for the notion that this bill is “serious” about the energy transition, Chuck Schumer called that “laughable,” and declared this “wishlist for big oil” Dead On Arrival in the Senate.

Equally specious is the Trumpian claim that this legislation is a formula for “critical mineral dominance.” This US Geological Survey presentation on global distribution of critical minerals or these maps from The Wilson Center suggest just how infeasible that is. Misleading claims and rhetorical swagger on this score can lead to bad policy at home and serious missteps abroad.

Take a closer look and it’s clear that this is an act of legislative mischief. The stated legislative purpose of H.R. 1 is to “lower energy costs by increasing American energy production, exports, infrastructure, and critical minerals processing”; but when it comes to critical minerals the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact, the piece of H.R. 1 Stauber wrote (the not-so-subtly entitled  Permitting for Mining Needs Act, or Permit-MN) would do nothing to help secure “critical minerals dominance.” Instead it would effectively do away with critical minerals.

Permit-MN goes through 30 U.S. Code § 1607, the “Critical Minerals Supply Chain and Reliability” section of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and at every opportunity strikes the word “critical” from the books. It changes the title of the section to “Minerals Supply Chain and Reliability.” It removes the word “critical” from “each place such term appears” in the Sense of Congress section. That section currently reads:

It is the sense of Congress that-
(1) critical minerals are fundamental to the economy, competitiveness, and security of the United States;
(2) many critical minerals are only economic to recover when combined with the production of a host mineral;
(3) to the maximum extent practicable, the critical mineral needs of the United States should be satisfied by minerals responsibly produced and recycled in the United States; and
(4) the Federal permitting process has been identified as an impediment to mineral production and the mineral security of the United States. [emphasis mine.]

Sense becomes nonsense. And Permit-MN makes the same move in subsequent sections, striking the word “critical” wherever it appears. In other words, H.R. 1 would extend the special legislative consideration given to critical minerals, because they are “fundamental to the economy, competitiveness, and security of the United States,” to any and every mining project.

Permit-MN has already won Stauber some favorable local press but it only makes a mockery of serious concerns about national security and the energy transition. What really counts here is not the public interest, or making responsible industrial policy to meet the country’s critical mineral needs, but the immediate financial interests of mining companies. And if this is an indication of the reckless permitting reform we can expect from this Congress, then we are better off leaving things as they are.

Holding Up Political Props Will Not Uphold Human Rights

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When American politicians like Bruce Westerman talk about mining cobalt in the United States, they are almost always talking about copper and nickel mining. According to the US Geological Survey, the US has only 4 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves; and with the notable exception of the Jervois cobalt mine in Idaho and some unexploited reserves in Missouri, “any future cobalt production” would be a “byproduct” of copper and nickel mining.

Most of that mining would be done in the Lake Superior region. In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Lundin’s Eagle Mine has produced cobalt-bearing nickel concentrate. Rio Tinto-Talon Metals already control copper and nickel development from Ishpeming to the Keweenaw. In addition to this massive 400,000 acre land package in Michigan, the joint venture also controls the 31,000 acre Tamarack project in Minnesota, the state where most US cobalt reserves are located.

Even here, the primary target resource is nickel, followed by copper, as Tamarack’s own estimates clearly show. In 2017, Antofagasta briefly floated the idea in its annual report that its Twin Metals project near the Boundary Waters would be a significant source of cobalt, but this looks like nothing more than an attempt to position the mine as a source of critical minerals, and the company abandoned that posture. (Trump’s Department of Interior toyed with the idea, too.)

In light of these basic facts, Westerman’s arguments look specious and his moral posture deeply cynical. It’s concerning to see the Chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources use the artisanal, small-scale miners of the Congo as a political prop – I use that word advisedly – and trade on serious human rights concerns without any plan to address them. Amnesty International’s Mark Dummet fears this kind of “wholly self-serving” virtue signaling could even harm the people it pretends to protect.

Westerman seems to be taking his cues from Minnesota Republican Pete Stauber, who made the same argument after the Biden administration announced the 20-year mineral withdrawal to protect the Boundary Waters:

Joe Biden banned mining in over 225,000 acres of Minnesota’s Iron Range, and locked up development of taconite, copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum group elements, and more…not even one month ago, Joe Biden signed an agreement [presumably the Minerals Security Partnership] to fund mining projects in Chinese-owned mines in the Congo, where over 40,000 children work as slaves in forced labor and inhumane conditions with no environmental protections.

Stauber has made similar shows of concern about human rights in the Congo in the past. This time, just a couple of days later, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal repeated the talking point: “The reality is that if minerals aren’t mined in the U.S., they will be extracted in countries with far less stringent environmental and labor standards.”

A small correction: the reality is that even if minerals are mined in the United States, they will be extracted in countries with far less stringent environmental and labor standards.**

The focus instead should be on taking steps to raise those standards, as Dorothée Baumann Pauly of the Geneva Center for Business Human Rights argues in a new white paper. Trying to eschew artisanally-mined cobalt from the DRC is tantamount to “denial of market realities,”* she writes:

global companies buying cobalt need to encourage the formalization and responsible extraction of the mineral rather than engaging in a futile attempt to avoid cobalt associated with ASM [artisanal small-scale mining] — an attempt that also ignores the sustenance that artisanal mining provides to millions of poor people.

In the Mutoshi pilot formalization program studied by Baumann-Pauly, mechanically prepared (open pit) small-scale mines improved safety. “Formalization stopped children and pregnant women from coming to the mine site.” Other measures encouraged women to participate in mining. The pay these women miners earned could double household income, and in interviews they said the extra income helped offset educational expenses for their children, who were now in school instead of working at a mine site. (Though the pilot program ended during the Covid-19 pandemic, a local cooperative continues to try to enforce these new standards at Mutoshi.)

None of this amounts to a perfect solution, but there’s clearly an opportunity to build on what this pilot accomplished, and it’s encouraging that Microsoft’s Michele Burlington, who accompanied Baumann-Pauly on her trip to the Congo, called for a “coalition” to address ASM in the cobalt supply chain.

If Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter) want to address human rights abuses in the DRC, then they should focus on taking constructive steps. And if they are really concerned about China’s outsize influence in the mineral supply chain, then they might want to take a closer look at China’s ownership stakes in companies like Rio Tinto, the very companies that promise to bring jobs and economic development to their own districts.

*This chart from The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) nicely illustrates the point.

** A briefing from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre also warns against the complacency behind these arguments: “assumptions [that] localisation of supply of transition minerals and their production in Europe and North America will guarantee respect for human rights and a sustainable, ethical provision of these materials are misguided.”

Will the 118th Congress See A Green Right Coalition?

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Yesterday’s post about Nancy Pelosi’s remarks on China belongs to one strand of a larger story that’s coming into focus.  It’s a story about China and human rights, to be sure, but also about what role human rights issues will play in the transition to renewables and in the politics of the transition.

House Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee have already cited reports of human rights abuses in China and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (where Chinese companies control cobalt mining operations) as an argument for boosting extraction of critical minerals here in the US. As the gavel passes in the coming year, their position is likely to attract even more support.

In fact, the 118th Congress could see the emergence of a Green Right coalition: hawkish on China, touting the magic of markets, openly hostile to the administrative state, and more interested in achieving energy dominance (to borrow a phrase from the Trump years) than in paying lip service to a just transition (as some Democrats do).  The incoming Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, plans to “outcompete China on climate:” that phrase sums up a whole political and geopolitical agenda. 

The program could be a political winner: anti-China, pro-growth, industry-captured climate policy may accelerate organized labor’s rightward drift; and the Green Right may even enjoy an uneasy honeymoon period with more left-leaning advocates of permitting reform.

Over the past year or so, as Joe Manchin tried but failed to advance his permitting deal, reformers have shown themselves ready to take an axe to environmental law, they have regularly dismissed public opposition as NIMBY whining, and some of them have done more public advocacy for extractive industry than seasoned lobbyists and flacks could ever dream of doing.