by Mandy Gunasekara
The media is now working overtime to rewrite the background of the Harris-Walz ticket. With all eyes shifting to Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, they have their work cut out.
Get ready for a new, refined version of Walz, where he is cast as a moderate, pro-worker Midwesterner — meant to balance out Kamala’s left-wing liberalism. But Walz is not that and American steelworkers, their families and the communities surrounding the Twin Metals Mine of Northeast Minnesota know this all too well.
Northeastern Minnesota is blessed with a plethora of critical and strategic metals that are key components to our modern life. There is an area referred to as the Duluth Complex that, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is home to the largest undeveloped deposits of nickel, cobalt and platinum group minerals (PGM) in the world.
The Twin Metals mine in particular is positioned to be a state-of-the-art underground operation within the Duluth Complex using advanced and precise methods of extraction that could deliver these much-needed metals to growing markets.
Given that these metals are key components to cell phones and cars — both gas-powered and electric — as well as solar panels and windmills, the location of these minerals here in the United States should be good news. This should especially be true for an administration like Biden-Harris that is hell-bent on restructuring our entire utility and vehicle industries, so they are more “green.”
From a practical perspective, this type of restructuring will require an immense amount of the minerals that are located at, and very accessible in, the Twin Metals mine. Globally, one estimate suggests that to reach electrification goals the world will need to produce the same amount of copper in the next 25 years as humanity has produced in the last 5,000.
Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration not only cancelled two long-standing mineral leases at the Twin Metals mine, but they also imposed a 20-year moratorium on the surrounding area. This decision imperiled the 750 direct jobs and 1,500 spinoff jobs in the surrounding community that the mine would have supported.
Many of these jobs were for United Steelworkers who were set to buildout and operate the $1.7 billion mine. As often as the Biden-Harris administration talked about creating green energy jobs, they took numerous actions that cancelled the ones that actually did exist.
Walz oversaw the entire debacle. And when the Twin Metals mine and local jobs organizations asked for a lifeline in the aftermath of the Biden-Harris cancellation, he answered it with … more process! Specifically, Walz’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) allowed the mine to explore surrounding state and private lands for minerals but reiterated there would be no actual mining, and such a decision would likely be years into the future after “lengthy environmental review and permitting.”
In other, non-bureaucratic words: It’s paralysis by analysis for the project.
These cancelled mining projects and jobs would have been done consistent with U.S. safety and environmental standards. Instead, China will reap the benefits of the Biden-Harris cancellation and Walz’s complacency.
Beyond concern for negative environmental impacts, some reports have found that foreign sourced minerals are mined using child forced labor. From a national security purview, this anti-development approach is equally damaging as U.S. reliance on foreign-sourced minerals continues to grow. Specifically, for the minerals buried in abundance at the Twin Metals mine, the U.S. is over 50 percent import reliant for nickel, 79 percent reliant for platinum, 76 percent reliant for cobalt, and 37 percent reliant for copper.
Those who have seen Walz work up close, including Republican Rep. Pete Stauber, have sounded the alarm on the consequences of his anti-mining, anti-energy policies. Under his watch Minnesota electricity costs have skyrocketed for residents.
For businesses, it’s even worse. Minnesota now boasts the highest industrial electricity prices in the Midwest.
Walz’s folksy appearance aside, he has embraced California-style climate zealotry to the extreme. He signed his state up for “100 percent carbon free electricity by 2040” which is estimated to cost billions of dollars, double electricity prices by 2034, lead to blackouts and kill jobs.
He also wants to ban gas-powered vehicles in the process.
Walz’s aggressive, anti-development approach, especially on energy and the environment, mirrors that of failing socialist nations. It is no wonder Minnesota has experienced significant downfalls under his leadership.
Regardless of how the media portrays him, they cannot erase his record of selling out the workers of Twin Metals mine to the liberal Left.
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Mandy Gunasekara served as chief of staff to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Tim Walz” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
