The Trust Vacuum.
I’ve spent my life in Minnesota, a state that tends to produce reasonable people. We keep our noses glued to our work. We don’t expect too many miracles. We make an honest effort to not let our lives be consumed by pointless argument.
This is how we’ve managed to have an economy that keeps most of us employed, and at the same time an environment that’s stone cold beautiful.
And so when some big oil and mining companies came through the state with promises of good jobs, even if it meant working near some pristine natural areas, I had hoped we could find a smart way to make it happen.
The friends I’ll be paddling with next week in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area would throw me into a cold lake if they heard me say that, but there it is. The people in Northern Minnesota could use the work. Besides, we’ve had a long history with mining in the state. I’d hoped we could learn from the mistakes of the past, figure out some sensible regulations to make sure we don’t get stuck with a mess to clean up like in the bad old days when the mine owners called all the shots, and get the projects done.
Congressman Rick Nolan, who’d dearly love to bring the economic benefits of a high-tech copper and nickel mine to his Northern Minnesota district, made a similar appeal to reason:
“In truth, a lot of people are comfortable having the minerals and resources necessary to enjoy technology and combat global warming as long as they can be mined in someone else’s backyard — in developing countries without environmental standards, living wages or worker safety protections. That’s disingenuous, wrong and damaging to our entire planet. Why not mine these minerals right here, where we have the world’s toughest environmental regulations, state and federal laws, and financial assurances — all in place to ensure that mining is done the right way?”
But there’s a fly the size of an elephant in the ointment here. Or a fox in the henhouse, if you don’t mind me indulging in a little metaphor mixology.
Open the newspaper and you read that our new head of the Environmental Protection Agency has surrounded himself with armed guards to make sure he’s not bothered by the scientists working for his agency. That may make him a nutcase, but it doesn’t even qualify him as outlier among those currently leading our government.
The sort of assurances Mr. Nolan was citing went out with the Obama administration. Now the agencies are all run by people who’ve made dismantling them their life’s work. The EPA spends its days at war with science. Then climbs into a soft bed with the industries it’s supposed to regulate. We’re heading for a regulatory system that would embarrass a third-world Kleptocracy.
This is not a formula for trust.
And without trust that our regulatory agencies will do any actual regulating, the only answer to things like the pipeline Enbridge Energy wants to build near Minnesota’s traditional wild rice lakes or the copper and nickel mine the PolyMet company wants to build on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is no. Nada. Zilch.
Sorry Mr. Nolan, but what else is a reasonable person to think.
The trust whooshes out of Washington D.C. with every Tweet, fib, collusion, denial of scientific fact and mass displacement of career civil servants. The regulatory agencies are being gutted with the goal of unshackling business and industry. But the truth is, what they’re really dismantling is our ability to trust the system to protect us and our cherished natural heritage. That trust was the currency that would allow projects like the ones in Minnesota to go forward. Without it the only alternative is to always view business and industry with suspicion. It’ll be The Stand-off at Standing Rock all over again every time one of these projects comes up, and good for us if we finally win a few.
Talk like that bruises the ego of the reality TV guy we have running the show, and he takes to Twitter to complain about liberal environmentalists obstructing his program. It would be more helpful if he took a long look at the person he sees in the mirror and asked, “Who broke the trust?”
