Many minerals that are key to building electric vehicles are produced outside the United States.
But the Biden administration keeps halting or preventing mining projects. At the Heartland Institute, Miles Pollard and Austin Gae review the current state of mining projects. (Direct quotes follow.)
- In January, the Environmental Protection Agency blocked development of a proposed billion-dollar copper- and gold-rich Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, ostensibly to protect the fishing rights of 68 Native Americans.
- That same month, the Environmental Protection Agency blocked Twin Metals, a proposed copper and nickel mine in Minnesota, with a 20-year moratorium despite the looming closure in 2025 of the last U.S. nickel mine. . . .
- In May, the EPA lobbied against Polymet’s NewRange Copper Nickel mine in Minnesota, citing mercury being released into rivers. . . . The Army Corps of Engineers bowed to the EPA, though, and the next month ruled against allowing the NewRange mine.
- In August, President Joe Biden used the 1906 Antiquities Act to declare unilaterally that about 1 million acres of public lands in northern Arizona would become a national monument, blocking extraction of uranium.
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