Editorial Counterpoint: Assault on mining harms all Minnesota, America – by Kelly Osborne (Star Tribune – October 31, 2021)

https://www.startribune.com/

Kelly Osborne is chief executive, Twin Metals Minnesota.

The Star Tribune Editorial Board recently lauded the federal government’s announcement that it would be reinitiating a mineral withdrawal study on nearly a quarter-million acres of land in northeast Minnesota that could lead to a 20-year ban on mining in this area (“A win for Boundary Waters Stewardship,” Oct. 25).

The question I pose to the board, to our nation’s leaders and to mining opponents is this: Do you value smartphones, medical technology, clean energy solutions, broadband, electricity, roads, buildings and infrastructure? If you’re like most common-sense Americans and answered unequivocally yes, then do you realize that the hardworking people of the mining industry produce the raw materials critical to all these things?

An assault on the mining industry is like attacking America’s farmers for producing the food that sustains us. Simply put: It’s wrong and hypocritical. And, unfortunately, Twin Metals Minnesota is not the first mining project to be targeted by the current administration.

Nor are we the only ones that would be negatively impacted by a mining ban in northeast Minnesota, which sits on top of the world’s largest known undeveloped copper-nickel deposit.

For the rest of this column: https://www.startribune.com/editorial-counterpoint-assault-on-mining-harms-all-minnesota-america/600111855/?refresh=true