What the Tweet in question failed to mention is that the majority owner of PolyMet, Glencore, is
"the world’s largest cobalt-mining company by a long shot, achieving total production of 27,400 tonnes in 2017. According to the Financial Times, the company is aiming to increase its cobalt output to 63,000 tonnes by 2020.According to the Mesabi Daily News, "Stauber’s first act: Clear path for PolyMet."
To do so, Glencore has been taking steps to increase its presence in the cobalt space. It upped its involvement in the cobaltand copper markets last year, paying Fleurette Group $960 million for its stakes in Mutanda Mining and Katanga Mining (TSX:KAT), both located in the DRC."
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| Birch Lake at the edge of the Boundary Waters
Photo by J. Harrington
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It's no doubt just me being old fashioned, but there appears to be a little bit of hypocrisy and pot and kettle calling in Stauber's Tweet @BettyMcCollum04. No doubt, your mileage may vary.
The other point mention in Stauber's Tweet, with which I vehemently disagree, is that Minnesota's mining standards are "the strongest labor & environmental standards in the world." In fact, I wish Minnesota would establish a blue ribbon commission, comparable to the one that prepared a plan of action for mining reform in British Columbia. If Minnesota's mining standards were consistent with and comparable to those recommended for British Columbia, I might agree our standards are "world class." If you search this blog, however, you'll find a number of times when assertions similar to Stauber's, about the strength of our mining standards, have been challenged. In fact, it's my firm belief that, if Minnesota's standards actually were world class, and were actually followed, McCollum's Boundary Waters Protection legislation would probably not be needed.
The Wilderness
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn
Put off the summer’s languor with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,
To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.
Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.
Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us,
There’s an old song calling us to come!
Come away! come away!—for the scenes we leave behind us
Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that’s young forever;
And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,
That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains.
The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us,
And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years;
But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us
In the strangeness of home-coming, and a woman’s waiting eyes.
Come away! come away! there is nothing now to cheer us—
Nothing now to comfort us, but love’s road home:—
Over there beyond the darkness there’s a window gleams to greet us,
And a warm hearth waits for us within.
Come away! come away!—or the roving-fiend will hold us,
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring:
There are no men yet may leave him when his hands are clutched upon them,
There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother.
So we’ll be up and on the way, and the less we boast the better
For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know:—
The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it,
And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.
Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us—
Frozen men that mock us with a wild, hard laugh
That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes,
And the long fall wind on the lake.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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