President Trump is determined to make America self-sufficient and energy-dominant.
The USA already produces more oil and gas than any other nation, and he intends to unleash its full potential—for energy and petrochemical feedstocks for 6,000+ pharmaceutical, plastic, paint, fabric, cosmetic, and other products. [emphasis, links added]
As he puts it, “Drill, baby, drill!”
Abundant, reliable, affordable energy is the lifeblood of modern industrial societies. But they also need hundreds of metals and minerals because nothing can be manufactured or grown without them, and no wells can be drilled without them.
That’s why the president has launched similar initiatives for the treasure troves in Alaska and the Lower 48.
That call to action is “Mine, baby, mine!” and before that, “Explore, baby, explore!”
The Stone Age didn’t end because our ancestors ran out of stones, nor did the Bronze Age because they exhausted copper supplies.
They ended because societies needed weapons and goods that were better, stronger, and more durable – and innovators discovered iron substitutes, iron deposits, and techniques for converting ores into finished products.
Indeed, every technological transformation throughout history required finding and mining previously unknown and unneeded metal and mineral deposits that suddenly became essential for progress.
Trump 47’s Executive Orders for drilling and mining – and ending offshore wind, Green New Deal, and electric vehicle mandates, subsidies, and programs – will dramatically reduce the need for millions of tons of copper, steel, cobalt, lithium, rare earth, and other materials. However, they won’t end that need.
But now America can build more coal, gas, and nuclear power plants – instead of 10,000 wind turbines and 10,000,000 solar panels backed up by fossil-fuel generators … or huge battery warehouses like the one that recently became yet another conflagration in California.
However, today’s rapidly evolving server, artificial intelligence, aerospace, military, and other technologies still means we must find and produce materials that almost no one ever mined or even heard of until recently: rare earth elements, cobalt, lithium, and scores of other critical strategic minerals.
China controls 60% of global rare earth production and processes 90% of it – including ores mined in the USA and other countries.
It also controls cobalt and lithium production and processing, and almost all the processed graphite used in lithium-ion batteries for cell phones, EVs, and grid-scale backup batteries.
That means the United States depends on this adversarial nation for numerous technologies; even Navy SEAL equipment requires 20+ minerals that are at least 50% imported, many from China.
This untenable situation was underscored last December when China severely restricted exports of antimony, gallium, and germanium, especially to the United States, because these elements are essential for both civilian and military technologies.
The Middle Kingdom could block many more such exports, using exports as a weapon of diplomacy, extortion, or war.
The situation makes no geologic sense either. The plate tectonic and geologic history of Alaska and the Western states have blessed America with countless, often enormous deposits of metals and minerals across the periodic table of elements.
Some are well-known, while others have yet to be discovered, mapped, or developed to serve changing, growing, and increasingly strategic needs.
Even the 1964 Wilderness Act recognized this. Section 2 permits prospecting to gather information about mineral resources and requires “planned, recurring” mineral surveys if those activities are conducted in a manner consistent with preserving “the wilderness environment.” There is no “end” date for this work.
Section 3 permitted mining claims and mineral leasing, exploration, drilling, roads, production, mechanized equipment, and other necessary operations and facilities until midnight December 31, 1983.
The only stipulation was that disturbed areas be reclaimed and restored “as near as practicable,” once mineral extraction had ceased.
However, federal bureaucrats ignored this clear language and stalled, stymied, or prohibited all requests for permits to conduct such work, including recurring government mineral surveys and assessments.
Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rupert Cutler’s comment to me in 1978 encapsulates their attitude, then and now. “I don’t think Congress should have enacted that provision,” he said.
“But Congress did enact it, and you are obligated by your oath of office to follow the law the way it was written, not the way you think it should have been written,” I responded. Dr. Cutler walked away.
Successive generations of federal land managers – in consort with preservationists, courts, presidents, and legislators – have banned or severely restricted even minimally intrusive exploration in the huge wilderness, wilderness study, wildlife refuge, Antiquities Act, and even undesignated forests, deserts, and grasslands – regardless of critical national needs or clear legislative language.
National parks should be off-limits. In most cases, these other lands should not.
By 1994, when I helped prepare perhaps the last detailed analysis, mineral exploration and development had been banned in federal land areas equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming combined.
That’s 420 million acres – 19% of the USA; and 66% of all federal/public lands.
It’s gotten “progressively” worse, even though processes unleashed by plate tectonics, volcanism, and other forces created some of the most highly mineralized deposits in North America and the world.
State and local legislators, regulators, judges, and activists have treated non-federal lands the same way. Even world-class deposits have been deep-sixed, often on questionable grounds.
This cannot continue. These areas must be surveyed and explored by government agencies and private companies.
Vital, high-quality deposits must be made available for mining, under sound environmental principles, to meet the requirements of current and future generations.
Failure to do so violates the most fundamental principles of national defense, national security, responsible government, and societal need.
Alaska’s Pebble Mine prospect has an estimated 55 million tons of copper ore, 3.3 billion tons of molybdenum, plus other metals needed for wind turbines, solar panels, EVs, and other technologies; yet Biden’s EPA rejected permit applications even before mining plans were submitted.
Other world-class Alaskan deposits of copper, cobalt, zinc, titanium, gold, silver, zinc, and other metals also sit in limbo.
In Minnesota, Biden officials also reversed mining permits for the world’s largest copper-nickel deposit, and President Biden himself banned all mining in 225,000 acres of the state’s Iron Range.
The fate of the Kings Mountain lithium deposit (possibly 5,000,000 tons of Li) in North Carolina is likewise uncertain, as is that of many other excellent prospects, even though modern US laws and technologies would ensure far better environmental practices than elsewhere worldwide.
Some concerns are certainly valid, others exaggerated, and still others reflect a determination to block mining anywhere in the USA, or even de-develop and de-industrialize America and the West.
However, environmental and other considerations must always be balanced against the need for critical metals, minerals, and energy to sustain modern societies and living standards.
Making America Great Again – and responding to today’s national security threats and needs – requires changing federal and state perspectives, policies, and laws to recognize this. It’s a simple matter of reality and common sense.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate, and human rights issues.
