Mort Rosenblum: Biden's words, inscribed in Arizona copper

Joe Biden pretty much wrote this column for me. I’ll just fit it into Arizona’s borders — and link them to the rest of a world that so many otherwise occupied people in America tend to ignore.

Biden’s brief swan song from the White House made a chilling point:

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

Updating Dwight Eisenhower’s term — military industrial complex — Biden warned of a tech industrial complex. He ended on an optimistic note but with a crucial “if” caveat: Are Americans up to the challenge?

Technology tycoons paid a million dollars each, along with abject obeisance, to sit near Donald Trump tomorrow at his inaugural extravaganza. Together, they account for a major share of our wondrous new tools, toys and transport.

Their media companies, often not very social, reach the farthest-flung places. Some build rockets so a chosen few might move to Mars when unbridled consumption makes Earth uninhabitable. And they all consume copper as if there was no tomorrow.

You see where I’m going here.

Two-thirds of the copper mined in America is gouged from Arizona in open-pit mines, plundering scarce water in some of most spectacular and biodiverse places in our hemisphere.

Yet Arizona produces only about million metric tons a year. The global total is near 22 million tons, and the U.S. Geological Survey says known reserves are at least a billion. The malleable metal is easily melted to be recycled but often isn’t.

Mining companies argue for more U.S. production because copper is important to national security. That is a reason to preserve ore beds intact rather than deplete them.

Proponents harp on NIMBY. Not in my backyard. We need copper. It must come from somewhere. But in South America, Africa and Asia, countries badly in need of jobs and foreign currency want it in their backyards.

Today, mining executives seek the cheapest, fastest way to exploit resources until they are depleted, heedless of the damage they leave behind or the consequences for future generations. For hard-rock metals, it is often a matter of America last.

Rather than face higher costs and the risks of mining in far-flung remote places, foreign-owned companies prefer to operate in the United States and bank their profits at home in Canada, Britain or Australia.

Because of an 1872 federal law meant to encourage American mining, along with state legislation, both foreign and domestic companies pay little in royalties and severance taxes.

Copper was an Arizona mainstay in territorial days when its ecological impact was limited to what men could do with pickaxes and burros. A drive up the Coronado National Scenic Byway from Morenci shows what followed in later years.

Clearly, more mining is essential in Arizona. But not without careful thought about where, why and how. All that new technology, along with rising prices, allows giant shovels to rip up low-grade ore once left in place.

Back in 2018, for a Harper’s magazine piece, I crisscrossed Arizona in a small plane with a gutsy pilot who once monitored Arizona’s water for the Army Corps of Engineers. We were stunned.

From the Morenci mine, now operated by Phoenix-based Freeport McMoRan and the Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo, devastation already flanked that scenic highway for eight miles.

Near Superior, Resolution Copper is investing billions on a project to drill two miles under Apache Leap, destroying sacred tribal land at nearby Oak Flat. Biden stalled permitting as Indians and environmentalists fight the mine in federal courts.

If approved under Trump, Rio Tinto and BHP expect to exploit the mine for 60 years, with profits going to their headquarters in Australia and Britain.

But just focus on Pima County.

High fences shield the Silverbell Mine, owned by the Asarco subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, just northwest of Tucson. From the air, it a vast upside-down Machu Picchu. Asarco also owns Pima Mine west of I-19 near Green Valley, next to Freeport’s Sierrita.

Both are flanked by growing mountains of waste rock and tailings that blow off dust clouds when not sprayed with water. And now we await Copper World.

Hudbay Minerals of Toronto finally has permits to operate on privately owned land in the Santa Ritas after lawsuits put its Rosemont Mine in limbo. The Star’s Tony Davis has covered this saga for more than a decade. He describes Copper World in detail.

Hudbay intends to process ore from its vast open pits by “heap leaching” with sulfuric acid, which risks polluting groundwater. When the ore deposits play out, it is supposed to clean up the mess. Even if it does, devastation will be left behind.

Hydrologists warn that in the Santa Ritas, abandoned deep pits would fill with groundwater seepage and rainfall, permanently evaporating under Arizona sun. There is more to say about water, but this is bigger than even that.

Trump plans to rescind what he calls bureaucratic regulations, which include laws that protect public health, water supply, ecological diversity and the environment in general. He did much of that in his term. Now he is going for broke.

Think that over and go back to Biden. In a single term, he worked beyond party lines to bring a Covid-crippled nation to full employment, with historic growth that far outpaces other rich-world economics.

Like other mining operations, Copper World promises significant incomes to the public coffers. It boasts 400 full-time jobs and a lot more “indirect” employment.

Those jobs include tasks like manning barriers that keep Americans from hiking and camping and on their own birthright wild country. They stop tribal members from visiting burial and hunting grounds their ancestors held sacred.

For such unskilled labor, why not hire legal immigrants? The U.S. economy needs four million new people a year to make it hum. Most homegrown Americans who enter the workforce shun such job, aiming higher in the tech industrial complex.

No matter how much money filters down into local economics, it is a derisive fraction of what outside tourism and local recreation would bring without enormous Superfund-type costs to attempt restoration of raped land.

“We’ve proven we don’t have to choose between protecting the environment and growing the economy,” Biden said. “We’re doing both.” America’s strength, he added, said, depends on character and institutions that must be passed on to new generations.

Its natural splendor is part of their heritage.