The Environmentalist menace intensifies: Activists are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to take a drastic regulatory step that could have significant repercussions for the U.S. economy. The Pebble Mine is a natural-resource project in Alaska that could yield more copper than has ever been found in one place anywhere in the world. It also holds strategic metals like molybdenum and rhenium, which are essential to countless American manufacturing, high-tech and national-security applications. Yet even before a plan to mine the deposit has been introduced, the EPA appears all too willing to bend to the pressure of environmental activists and try to stop the project. The irony here is that renewable-energy industries that environmentalists champion, like solar and wind, rely heavily on copper. More than three tons of it are needed for a single industrial wind turbine. The electric cables that carry the energy generated by these renewable sources to the national grid are usually made of copper, using the metal’s superior conductivity. Yet to hear anti-mining activists tell it, the project at Pebble Mine offers no benefits. If the EPA reinterprets existing law — Section 404 of the Clean Water Act — and grants itself unilateral authority to stop the permitting process before it begins, Pebble Mine won’t be the only project in its cross hairs, and copper won’t be the only metal. A 2011 study by the Brattle Group, an economic consulting firm, shows that U.S. economic development projects worth more than $200 billion would be exposed if the EPA asserts this new power.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 18:56:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015