Joe keeps blowin' it

Last summer, in the final months of the Trump administration, the Department of the Interior approved a 211-mile industrial access road that would run across much of interior Alaska to the Ambler mining district, a massive but remote deposit of high-grade copper and zinc. Ambler’s underground riches are so highly prized that when Gates of the Arctic National Park was created in 1980, the Alaska delegation made sure a provision for possible road access across the park was written into the legislation. The last time a road of this size was built through an undeveloped part of Alaska was in the early 1970s when the 414-mile Dalton Highway was put in to connect Prudhoe Bay, on the north slope of Alaska, with an existing network of roads near Fairbanks.

Ambler Road is similarly ambitious — and equally fraught environmentally. The road would ultimately enable the extraction of more than 43 million tons of copper and zinc over at least 12 years, creating thousands of jobs, say the Ambler mining interests, and pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into state coffers. But even before the first load of copper is removed, the road itself would irrevocably transform a vast region of Alaskan wilderness, potentially disrupting the migration patterns of the state’s largest caribou herd and polluting some of the state’s most important spawning grounds for salmon and whitefish. It would also threaten the way of life of Alaska natives who have lived in the region for thousands of years and depend on those resources as their primary food source.

The Alatna is “the main tributary for life and water down to all of the people on the Koyukuk River,” Gaedeke said. “So they’re pretty worried about that crossing.”

[...]

It was on similar grounds that President Joe Biden, on his first day in office, put a temporary moratorium on oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Trump administration had rushed the lease sale, downplaying scientific evidence of the social and environmental impacts. Biden’s dramatic reversal of a project Donald Trump had made a keystone of his energy policy was celebrated by the conservation community, who saw it as a clear signal that Biden was prioritizing the environment over the needs of industry.

But the Biden administration has been conspicuously silent on the Ambler Road project, showing no intent to interrupt the approval process despite vocal opposition from multiple groups in Alaska.

[...]

After meeting with the Department of the Interior and White House officials in July, Natasha Singh, general counsel for the Tanana Chiefs Conference said, “We hope Biden is not going to defend President Trump’s failed process.”

But that is precisely what the Biden administration appears poised to do

  Politico

Every time an industry complains about jobs versus conservation, I get ticked off anew. Here, they're talking about jobs for 12 years. Versus a lifetime of environmental damage. It's crazy-making. 

Just like the timber industry and the coal industry, these jobs are on the brink of extinction anyway. Finite resources mean finite job opportunities. The better answer would be to sink money into to environmentally sustainable industries and retrain the people who now have jobs that are being phased out. 

For the love of Pete, we are so shortsighted. And corporations are so greedy. As long as there's a dime left to be profited, they intend to be there to get it.

Officials at the Department of the Interior have continued to process permits for predevelopment work this summer, including geotechnical drilling at proposed bridge sites on three major rivers, allowing the road construction to move toward its intended start in 2024. That work continues in spite of the allegations in both lawsuits that the Trump administration cut corners in the environmental review process to hasten approval of the road project, skipping important steps.

[...]

[Interior Director, and Native American, Deb] Haaland, who said during her confirmation hearing that the United States needed to reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers of critical minerals and that mining can be done responsibly, declined to be interviewed for this story. The Interior Department also declined to answer detailed questions about the handling of the environmental impact statement, and a spokesperson said the department had “no comment on ongoing litigation.”

[...]

If the road is built, it will pit the administration’s green-energy agenda against promises it has made to protect ecologically sensitive regions.

In early June, the Biden administration announced that it was establishing a task force to address the supply of critical minerals and emphasized the need to scale up domestic production to “meet national and global climate goals.” Large quantities of rare earth metals and other minerals, including copper, are needed for electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines and batteries — all critical to achieving the administration’s ambitious green-energy goals. Over the next few decades, global demand for copper is expected to soar by as much as 270 percent, with the needs of manufacturers outstripping supply by 2050, according to one estimate.

And as long as there's copper to be mined, we won't look for alternatives.

On August 18, a judge in Alaska voided permits for a major ConocoPhillips oil and gas development project on the North Slope, also backed by the Biden administration, because the review process was deeply flawed. The same judge has ordered the Department of Justice to prepare a brief by mid-November in defense of the impact statement for Ambler Road.

Cross your fingers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.