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I am writing in response to the June 8 letter (
Reader’s View: “Mining opponents, proponents must work together”
) challenging me to “sit down at a table with Twin Metals Minnesota to come to a compromise about the company’s proposed underground copper-nickel mine near Ely, which won’t harm our lakes and rivers.”
The letter offered no proof that the mine won’t harm our lakes and rivers — or the federally protected Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. But there is plenty of scientifically vetted information, and legal protections in place, indicating it could for centuries.
The letter asked “how we as a country are supposed to get from where we are today to ‘green building’ and ‘renewables,’ which LaDuke knows means manufacturing rechargeable batteries, wind turbines, and other green technologies that require metals to make.” Projects like Twin Metals and Talon Metals are non-starters for many good reasons. With Rio Tinto as its mining partner, a controversial global company with an abysmal environmental record, Talon is being pitched as “green mining.” But that is just greenwashing to pit the people and the water against renewable energy. The next generation of electrical-vehicle batteries — made from hemp, recycled battery materials, or sodium ion — will likely be on the market before Talon’s project is even producing ore.
Today, Minnesota has potential win-win solutions that both decrease carbon emission and provide opportunities in the emerging green economy as the climate crisis intensifies. Trillions of dollars would be invested and millions of steady, good-paying jobs would be created. Now is the time for all of us to get in on the “ground floor.”
As to that meeting, set a time and place, perhaps on Anishinaabe land so we can show everyone around and explain what a just transition to a greener economy looks like.
Winona La Duke
Callaway, Minnesota
The writer is executive director of Honor the Earth (honorearth.org), a national Native American environmental foundation.
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