To "B" or not to "B" mine

We know it's well past Valentine's Day but we couldn't resist playing on Shakespeare's immortal words for today's title. Nevertheless, what we're thinking about is a serious topic. It's about the form of corporate entity, and required oversight of that entity, that should be required of those wishing to apply for and hold a permit to mine in Minnesota.

The ultimate test of a man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice
something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.

Gaylord Nelson

Photo by J. Harrington

Minnesota has had, since 2015, legislation authorizing business entities to incorporate as a public benefit corporation. That means, among other things that:

Under traditional corporate statutes, the pursuit of social or environmental goals potentially exposes corporate directors to the risk of lawsuits from shareholders interested in profits alone. As a public benefit corporation, such lawsuits could be warded off more easily so long as the public benefit corporation can show it was acting with due care in following its public benefit mission.

So, from our perspective, any entity that wishes to obtain a permit to mine should be required to incorporate as a public benefit corporation. But, and this is a very important but, that's not enough. We also recommend that the public benefit corporation, to qualify as a holder of a permit to mine, also be certified as a "B" corp.

The B Corp Certification is a third-party certification administered by the non-profit B Lab, based in part on a company's verified performance on the B Impact Assessment. The benefit corporation is a legal structure for a business, like an LLC or a corporation. Benefit corporations are legally empowered to pursue positive stakeholder impact alongside profit. Some companies are both Certified B Corporations and benefit corporations, and the benefit corporation structure fulfills the legal accountability requirement of B Corp Certification. Learn more about the difference.

It may well be too late to require such conformance for the PolyMet project, unless, of course, it fails and needs to start again. There is, we believe, plenty of time to enact any required legislation and modify regulations that need tweaking, enabling Minnesota to do a much improved job of protecting the vulnerable environment of Northern Minnesota from foreign or domestic corporations that would put profit maximization ahead of environmental protection.

New Year

Joanna Klink

We woke to the darkness before our eyes,
unable to take the measure of the loss.
Who are they. What are we. What have we
   abandoned to arrive with such violence at this hour.
In answer we drew back, covered our ears
with our hands to the heedless victory, or vowed,
   as I did, into the changed air, never to consent.
But it was already too late, too late for the unfarmed fields,
the men by the station, the park swings, the parking lots,
   the ground water, the doves—too late for dusk
falling in summer, chains of glass lakes
   mingled into dawn, the corals, the neighbors,
the first drizzle on an empty street, cafeterias and stockyards,
young men asking twice a day for
   work. Too late for hope. Too far along
to meet a country, a people, its annihilating need.

Because the year is new and the great change
already underway, we concede a thousandfold
   and feel, harder than the land itself,
a complicity for everything we did not see
or comprehend: cynicism borne of raw despair,
long-cultivated hatreds, the promises of leaders
traveling like cool silence through the dark.
My life is here, in this small room, and like you
   I am waiting to know—but there is no time
to wait for what has happened.
What does the future ask of me,
those who won’t have enough to eat by evening,
those whose disease will now take hold—
   and the decades that carry past me once I’ve died,
generations of children, the suffering that is never solved,
the heat over the earth, its marshes,
   its crowded towers, its unbreathable night air.
I would open my hand from the wrist,
step outside, not lose nerve.
Here is the day, still to be lived.
We do not fully know what we do.
But the trains depart the stations, traffic lurches
   and stalls, a highway crew has paused.
Desert sun softens the first color of the rock.
Who governs now governs by grievance and old scores,
   but we compass our worth,
prepare to do the work not our own,
and feel, past the scorn in his eyes, the burden
in the torso of a stranger, draw close to the sick,
   the weak, the women without jobs, the twelve-year-old
facing spite half-tangled into sleep, the panic
tightening inside everyone who has been told to go,
I will help you although I do not know you,
and strive not to look away, be unwilling to profit,
   an ache inside that endless effort,
a slowed-down summons not from those
whose rage is lit by greed—we do not consent—
but the ones who wake without prospect,
those who don’t speak, cannot recover,
   like the old woman at the counter, the helpless father
who, like you, gets no more than his one life.

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