The Biden administration had better hope the world needs a lot of American-made solar panels.
If not, the calculus of its environmental jobs push — that dirty old stuff like coal and copper mining can be replaced by new green infrastructure projects like building windmills (that hopefully don’t freeze) — might be a bit problematic.
In any event, it’s not particularly popular with a lot of local politicians looking at huge job losses, particularly after President Joe Biden pulled the plug on the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office.
You can now count Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey among the aggrieved.
On Monday, The Arizona Republic reported, the U.S. Forest Service withdrew a decision based on a final environmental impact statement issued in January that would have allowed a copper mine project near Superior, Arizona. The Resolution Copper Project involves a land swap involving more than 2,000 acres of land that several Native American tribes consider sacred.
The swap would have given control of the land to Resolution Copper, which is owned by the British-Australian mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP, The Republic reported.
The Forest Service, an agency of the Department of Agriculture, had already ruled the ground could be mined ethically and safely, but the Biden administration is looking to Keystone XL this shindig, apparently.
In a statement, the USDA said it had “concluded that additional time is necessary to fully understand concerns raised by Tribes and the public and the project’s impacts to these important resources and ensure the agency’s compliance with federal law.”
Activist groups, which were challenging the January decision in court, are all but doing a victory lap now.
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