For Tiffany, All that Glitters Isn’t Gold
The company that is trying to develop the Pebble Mine has been preparing an application for a Clean Water Act permit for several years. So far they have spent $125 million on hundreds of environmental studies that cover every possible aspect of the mine’s potential impacts. If the Environmental Protection Agency concludes that the mine could ever pose any threat to the Bristol Bay watershed, then the permit will be denied.
That is the reality. But in this case at least, Tiffany is concerned with public relations, not reality. They have mindlessly accepted the anti-mining propaganda without any apparent concern for the facts or the damaging effects of their political advocacy. If the “No Dirty Gold” campaign succeeds, one of the largest copper and gold discoveries in the world will not be mined.
The economic loss to Alaska will be staggering. Hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth will not be created. One thousand high-paying jobs that the mine would provide for at least thirty years (and probably for several more decades) will vanish.
Of course, that would be just the beginning. If “No Dirty Gold” succeeds in blocking the Pebble Mine, then they will be in a stronger position to block other proposed mines around the country.
Tiffany doesn’t care about destroying one thousand American mining jobs. What’s a thousand jobs compared to enhancing Tiffany’s environmental image with their fashionable customers? After all, it’s unlikely that any miner will ever be able to afford a $3800 gold bangle imprinted with the Tiffany logo.
However, when their own profits are threatened, the company takes a very different position. In an official 2010 letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tiffany’s general counsel objected to an obscure provision in the Dodd-Frank banking reform bill that requires the company to certify that their jewelry does not contain any gold produced in or around the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The general counsel notes correctly that there is no way to determine where refined gold has been produced. Trying to comply with the so-called “conflict mineral” provision would be “impracticable and extremely costly.”
Rather than hypocritically trying to score points by opposing so-called “dirty gold,” Tiffany needs to clean up its own act.
The environmental groups run a shake down business. People need to stop being fooled by this.
You’re exactly correct on that score, Ruebacca; they’re behavior is coming across as a shakedown ploy more and more as time progresses. It’s as though the rabid environmental left have been taking pages out of the playbook used by NAN & Rainbow Coalition.
There’s more to the Pebble Mine story:
Environmentalists astroturfing with ‘sign-to-win’ road show
The Bristol Bay fishing fleet is more a WA constituency than an Alaska constituency as much of the fleet is WA based. Even though virtually everything in Alaska goes through WA ports, mostly Tacoma, the WA delegation has become quite hostile to Alaska economic interests. At one time Cantwell, I think, was even trying to restrict tankers hauling Alaska oil from plying Puget Sound. Seattle is all in an uproar because an Alaska Native Corporation bought up a couple of fishing companies in SEA and is moving the boats to Seward, AK. Of course, the dirty little secret is that the Native Corps can use “shareholder” preference in hiring, so no white kids from SEA (or AK) need apply. When we still had Sen. Stevens, he had the power to keep the People’s Republic of Seattle’s crazy lefties in check; Murkowski and Begich not so much.
Its time Americans stop kissing the butts of the environmental mafia.
I suggest it is time to start kicking the butts of the enviromentalists. If you threaten my wellbeing and livelyhood, that is a direct threat on my life. Maybe if those who lose their jobs from the acts of these people started to visit them late at night in their homes, they could be reeducated.
You’d better take a serious look at who owns the Pebble Project and their public statements about their medium- and long-term intentions.
This is a scheme to supply Chine with yet more raw materials for yet more of the manufacturing jobs that have been pushed out of America. The Brit and Canadian companies that are the frontmen for this scheme are simply that, and they have publicly stated the probability of selling their interests to Chinese companies once the permits are approved and extraction is fully underway.
Is that the kind of swindle that you intend to support under the false pretense of “American jobs”?
I’m sure that the gold and diamond mines in other parts of the world are 100% in keeping with environmental laws and requirements. Yeah, right. Yet they still will buy their gold and diamonds from there.
Oh, by the way, did you know that diamonds are basically sold by just a few companies? That there are so many diamonds being held back that prices would drop dramatically if they were actually released to the markets? Yet no one seems to be protesting the way that diamond prices are artificially inflated. But the monopolies aren’t American companies, so that’s okay (at least for now, but once the American companies toe the line, the rest of the world is next).
The shiny rocks known as diamonds do not have the intrinsic value people think they do.
As you pointed out, it is a controlled flow, dominated by a few companies.
And if people knew the story of how some diamond mining is accomplished, IMHO there would be a boycott.
You have an unholy alliance of a rich owner of a big lodge in the area, the greenies, and the mostly Seattle-based Bristol Bay fishing industry opposing the Pebble Mine, a huge open pit multi-mineral mine. Usually, the greenies can delay Alaska projects and make them much more expensive but they can’t stop them unless they’re on federal land. Dillingham, AK is the entrepot to both the Bristol Bay fishery and to the Pebble Mine area. DLG is about an hour from Anchorage by B737. Dillingham itself and the entire Bristol Bay area has no connection to the US road system and is accessible only by boat or plane. While DLG itself statistically is fairly well off, the Southwest Alaska area is one of the State’s poorest areas and also has a very high cost of living due to transportation costs. DLG itself is approximately 50% Yupik (Eskimo) and 35% White. The surrounding area is predominantly Yupik. It is very difficult to accurately assess cost of living differentials between regions of Alaska because of lifestyle differences, but the Alaska Department of Administration calculates the Southwest Alaska region to be approximately 50% more expensive than the Anchorage area.
Like most of rural Alaska, there is very little fulltime, year-round private sector employment. The primary source of fulltime employment is government. Residents take such wage work as is available on an intermittent or seasonal basis, mostly related to the fishing and construction industries, and many rely on subsistence hunting and fishing for sustenance. Cannery work was once a mainstay source of employment in coastal Alaska but much of the fish processing is now done at sea and uses little local labor.
The realistic fear of the fishing industry is that the Greenies will trash the reputation of Bristol Bay fish should the mine be built. As the author notes, the water coming out of a modern mine is cleaner than the water that goes in, but the myth is that mine outflow is a toxic stream of arsenic and cyanide. All it would take is one “study,” easily purchased as we all know, that says there is a “high” level of pollutants in Alaska waters and the Alaska branding of wild salmon is destroyed. The Greenies have proven repeatedly that they will do this to an industry, so the industry’s fears have a sound basis. Of course, it will never be mentioned that farmed fish are raised in a disease ridden soup of fish waste and artificial foods.
The State of Alaska derives very little direct revenue from mining and has no general income tax. The benefit to the State would be on reduced social welfare and infrastructure costs in the region due to the increase in employment. DLG and the small communities in the region could see some property tax revenue that could be used to provide more or better infrastructure and public services, which are largely either provided by the State, e.g., education, most public safety, airport and road construction and maintenance, or simply not available in the area.
The State joined with the developer in resisting Greenie lawsuits against the Kensington Mine, a hard rock gold mine near Juneau. That battle took about ten years and a decision by the USSC. Other than the usual loud-mouthed greenies there was little local opposition to the Kensington Mine. Kensington made a concerted effort to mute local opposition by very actively recruiting labor from the smaller, predominantly Tlingit Indian communities of Southeast Alaska The anti-Pebble forces have managed to get considerable local opposition to the development, so it is an open question as to whether the State would assist the developer.
President Obama said that “We have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge…”
You couldn’t build the Golden Gate, now, or Hoover Dam and you can’t build a mine and hire people to work in it. Barry, of course, sees no correlation between the stifling regulations businesses face and things not getting done. We’ve “gotten soft.”
The sad irony here is that, if the “environmentalists” succeed, it will likely mean the eventual environmental destruction of Bristol Bay.
The gold isn’t going anywhere, unless people move it, but governments, governments aren’t forever, and when this one falls, whoever ends up with the mine is going to mine the hell out of it, and devil take the bay. Even if we descend to barbarism, gold and copper are very worth mining.
If they really want to save Bristol Bay, they’d be all about getting the gold out of there as quick and clean as possible.
Mining is the source of most wealth. From Mining comes all other industries, even mass agriculture, impossible without elements derived from Mining.
More importantly, looking at which countries are doing well while rest of world teeters on Depression;
Canada
Australia
China
Russia
Chile
What these countries have in common are large scale supported mining industries. The USA for whatever reason, has relegated Mining to the basement and actually shut down national mines.
It is not accident placing the US on petro dollar system at the same time mining industry was restricted has collapsed the US dollar 90% since 1971. There was simply no support for the USD on international markets any longer.
It is why Chinese, Russian, Australian and Canadian, Chilean, etc currencies are stronger against the Euro and USD…and will continue to be so. Their currencies have hard asset backing them
If we read which Stocks did well during the great Depression, they are mining and mining related. Mining is a Hard asset and has intrinsic Value, as opposed to ridiculous valuations placed on stocks by talking heads on MSM business reports. (investigate and place 10-20% of your portfolio into quality mining companies. If the general market collapses in the next 2-3 years, these will increase)
Mining is the single best avenue to wealth for all Nations, something we have forgotten, a mistake we continue to pay for.
EARTH FIRST!!!!
We can log and mine the other planets later!
EARTH FIRST!!!!!
The Pebble Project mining operation is mainly about providing China with source of raw mineral materials, mostly copper. Read on:
I’m not opposed to mining generally or to mining in Alaska, but it’s important to remember that the ultimate destination of the extracted Bristol Bay [Pebble Project] copper will be China, not the USA.
There are even alleged “greenies” who support the Pebble Project on the (false) premise that green tech requires a lot of copper, which we in the USA don’t currently have, and as a result all future green tech manufacturing will be done in Asia (aka China). Hence this mine should proceed so that the USA can manufacture the future green tech.
But that’s wrong on at least two counts: (1) the USA has a declining manufacturing capability and thus WILL NOT be consuming the extracted copper, and (2) China currently (in 2011) consumes 55 percent of global copper production, with its own domestic production in sharp decline, requiring evermore imports (e.g., from the above Bristol Bay mine).
It doesn’t take much thinking to realize that this mine will simply be another raw materials resource for China, just as Peru, Chile, and Zambia currently are. In this case it will be done through The Pebble Partnership (aka Bristol Bay) which is jointly owned by Anglo American plc (Brit), Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. (Canada), and Rio Tinto plc (Brit). Northern Dynasty currently owns 40 percent of the project and Rio Tinto 10 percent, Anglo American the other 50 percent.
However, Northern Dynasty CEO Ron Thiessen in April stated that its entire interest could be sold to Rio Tinto or to “an Asian metals trading-slash-smelting company, like a Mitsubishi, Mitsui or Sumitomo, or even one of the Chinese groups.”
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=49362683
In either case (be it Rio Tinto or “one of the Chinese groups”), the Pebble (Bristol Bay) copper and probably most of its other mineral output is going to China, not to the USA.
Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese stated in Shanghai last year:
“China is important to Rio Tinto in many ways, which is why we see the relationship as one between partners rather then simply supplier and customer. Yes, China is our biggest customer, but it is also … home of our largest shareholder, as well as the domicile of our major joint venture partners and 170 Rio Tinto employees.”
http://www.riotinto.com/media/18435_presentations_19534.asp
Nevermind the potential environmental impacts for the moment. Because Bristol Bay (Pebble) is at essence a scheme to supply China with raw copper, to the benefit of a couple Brit mining conglomerates and probably “even one of the Chinese groups” as CEO Ron Theissen mentioned above. There is very little benefit to the United States.