As an Iron Ranger, former miner and constituent of U.S. Rick Nolan, I must object to his deceptive Aug. 9 commentary ("Indeed, the green economy needs our mining").
While it's true that electric cars and wind turbines use steel and copper, it's not true that we benefit by using Minnesota's ore for those purposes. Our iron and copper ore bodies are low-grade. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are more than 150 countervailing and anti-dumping duties on steel imports. While some of those duties may have subsidized my paychecks, they also made steel more expensive.
If we insist on destroying national forest wetlands to open up a low-grade copper mine, there's not much doubt that the copper-mining corporations, like iron-mining corporations, will be demanding protective duties to shelter their industries from foreign competitors with higher-grade ore. We'll all be paying more for cars, windmills and, of course, cellphones. More mining in Minnesota means fewer windmills.
Nolan's claim that "mining is done the right way" is just plain false. The taconite tailings ponds on the Range are all leaking. There's a more-than-100-mile dead zone for wild rice in the St. Louis River.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, mining is less than 1 percent of Minnesota's economy. Instead of destroying our wetlands, we should diversify our Range economy.
Robert Tammen, Soudan, Minn.
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Before more land is mined for the minerals needed for green technology, the vacated mine area should be turned into a recycling center not seen before. Every cellphone, compact fluorescent bulb, personal computer, iPad, television, scanner, computer keyboard, computer mouse and monitor should be reclaimed for the metals they contain. By recycling the worn-out or unused gadget, the demand for the rare-earths would be minimized. Why don't we get the concept of "no waste"?
David Lick, Grand Rapids, Minn.
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