What is Amy Klobuchar's stance on copper-nickel mining?

[TexasTowelie]

When Amy Klobuchar launched her presidential campaign on a snowy February day in Minneapolis, she began by telling her family story. The daughter of a teacher and a journalist. The first woman from Minnesota elected to the U.S. Senate.

But to start, Klobuchar said: “I stand before you as the granddaughter of an iron ore miner.”

Her roots in Minnesota’s Iron Range and longstanding alliance with the iron mining industry have been hallmarks of Klobuchar’s political identity since she first ran for office. They’re also important to her presidential run as a “Heartland” Democrat who can appeal to rural white voters who swung to President Donald Trump in 2016. Yet as the new — and more environmentally risky — copper-nickel mining industry emerges on the Iron Range and promises a jolt to the mining economy, Klobuchar’s views have remained something of a mystery.

After 15 years of public scrutiny, people for and against mining seem pretty sure Klobuchar supports PolyMet, a $1 billion copper-nickel mine planned near Hoyt Lakes. Yet they are far less sure of Klobuchar’s stance on Twin Metals, a large and controversial operation that Chilean mining giant Antofagasta hopes to build just miles from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Read more: https://www.minnpost.com/environment/2019/06/what-is-amy-klobuchars-stance-on-copper-nickel-mining/

[NNadir]

1. The dirty secret of the wind industry is its copper intensity. If one is for so called...

..."renewable energy" one is for copper, steel and aluminum mining.

[Blue_true]

3. Any technology that actively generate movement of electrons and the

Resulting potential peak will like use a lot of copper. But that copper should be recoverable and recyclable.

[NNadir]

5. A system that utilizes copper for close to 100% capacity utilization is cleaner, safer, and...

...more sustainable than two systems, one of which operates at 30% - 40% capacity utilization, and a redundant system that operates to cover the other 60%-70% of the time, say when the wind isn't blowing at night time.

Recycling materials is an energy intensive process and the more mass it involves, the more difficult it is to perform. Further more, the more materials are reprocessed, the more material losses are observed. In many cases, these losses amount to serious pollution.

This is why for instance, China is now refusing to recycle electronic waste, because the practice has been an environmental and human health catastrophe.

Nuclear plants have world-wide, the highest capacity utilization of any energy system. They can easily operate for more than half a century and many have demonstrated this, even when built utilizing primitive 1950's and 1960's technology.

Their high energy to mass ratio makes the recycling of fuels a trivial enterprise, or would do so in a rational world, which is not the world in which we live.

Wind plants in Denmark can be shown, by appeal to the Wind Turbine Database scrupulously maintained by the Danish Energy Agency - I have done this multiple times - to last on average less than 20 years before they need to be replaced.

Moreover, the metals and materials within them are diffuse and often difficult to recover.

It would behoove you to look into what is involved in the process of recycling an iron-neodymium boride magnet, for just one example before being too glib about recycling.

Wind turbines are not equivalent to nuclear plants. They never will be as sustainable and as environmentally benign as nuclear plants.

[Blue_true]

8. Thanks for the educational post. I will look into some of the things you pointed out. nt

[Celerity]

9. +10000

[Honeycombe8]

2. If any candidate's state relies on some industry, that candidate cannot go against it.

That's the reality.

If MN relies on copper whatever mining, she can't be against it. She can be in favor of it being made safer, or newer methods of mining, or push other industries for the state, but she can't go against an industry that is responsible for MN resident jobs and the state's revenue. No candidate can.

Beto can refuse to take O&G donations, but he can't go against the O&G industry, because it's a big industry in his state. Biden can't go against big corporate interests, because that's what Delaware is all about (corps from around the country choose DE to be the state they file for incorporation, because it's so friendly to big business). And so on.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. There is no copper-nickel mining in Minnesota. There is iron ore mining, which is a very different

process and involves different companies. The issue is whether copper-nickel mining can be done safely in northern Minnesota. This depends on which report one reads, one's definition of "safely," and several other variables.

[mopinko]

6. how about she pledge to ban the penny? i'm srs.

this is a pet peeve of mine. i refuse to accept them most of the time.
they are not money any more.
they are a waste. a pox on the environment.

she would be a great one to take a shot at that.

[mtnsnake]

7. Amy's LCV lifetime environmental scorecard is a stellar 96%, even higher than Beto O'Rourke's

although Beto's score of 95 is excellent, too.

Compare Klobuchar's League of Conservation Voters environmental score of 96% to Joe Biden's LCV score of 83%, the lowest of any of the LCV-rated 2020 candidates by far and dismal in comparison to the rest of the Democrats. Biden is the only Democratic candidate with a score lower than 90, and 83 is significantly lower.