MINING 2

6/18 age of trump

SEE EXTRACTION

SUSIE WILES?

SEE NATIVE AM INDIGENOUS

rev dr return?

MINERAL CONCESSION IN TREATY UKRAINE, VENEZ? ZOMBABWE PUBLIC HEALTH EXTORTION? // CONFLICT MINERALS? RARE EARTH?

kid killer:

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/19/formaldehyde-leukemia-epa-trump-suppressed/

KOCH

intercept 921

Sharon Lerner

no lnx mANY DOC

a 2017 DRAFT assessment of formaldehyde that was suppressed by the Trump administration found that the chemical causes myeloid leukemia, according to several sources familiar with the document. The draft assessment concludes that 1 microgram of formaldehyde in a cubic meter of air increases the number of myeloid leukemia cases by roughly 3.5 in 100,000 people, more than three times the cancer risk in the assessment now in use. The EPA currently regulates formaldehyde using an outdated set of calculations, finalized in 1991, based on the risk of nasopharyngeal cancer. If the nasopharyngeal cancer and myeloid leukemia risks are combined, the cancer risk could be 4.5 times higher than the current value.

Although the suppressed assessment, produced by a division of the Environmental Protection Agency known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, has grave implications for public health, Trump administration officials, including former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, refused to allow the agency to release the assessment, several sources told The Intercept.

If the Biden EPA permits IRIS to finalize the assessment, which is among the most controversial in the agency’s history, other branches of the EPA will likely set regulatory limits based on the new risk value. IRIS values are used to determine safety thresholds for the amounts of the chemical permitted in air and water, emissions caps from industrial facilities, and guidance for cleanups. Such thresholds also alert exposed people to the dangers they face.

“This is a big, big deal. It could trigger significant interest by the personal injury bar,” said Bob Sussman, who served as the senior policy counsel to the EPA administrator during the Obama administration and deputy EPA administrator under President Bill Clinton. “Even without including the leukemia, the risk is a significant one. With the leukemia, it’s certainly a very significant public health concern.”

Even using the much lower, outdated cancer risk number set in 1991, formaldehyde is already the greatest source of nationwide cancer risk from industrial air pollutants,estimated to cause roughly 18 of the 32 cancers in every 1 million people in the U.S. that are caused by toxic pollutants in the air, according to the EPA’s own data. If the risk values are increased by a factor of four or more, the reported cancer risk from formaldehyde will go up accordingly, revealing previously unrecognized cancer hot spots around the country.

Formaldehyde, mainly used to make plywood, particleboard, and glues, is also a hazard for millions of workers who are exposed to the chemical through the production of resins, wood composite and furniture production, plastics manufacturing, paper production, embalming, foundry work, fiberglass production, building construction, agriculture, firefighting, and the teaching of biology, among other occupations. The general public is exposed to formaldehyde through tobacco smoke, cosmetics, food and water, as well as “off-gassing” from consumer goods, construction materials, and furniture. In 2019, 662 facilities reported releasing 47.7 million pounds of formaldehyde.

In addition to looking at the chemical’s relationships to nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia, the draft assessment also factored in evidence that formaldehyde causes decreased lung function, allergic conditions, reproductive and developmental toxicity, and sensory irritation.

In part because formaldehyde is so pervasive, a wide range of business interests have attempted to prevent the EPA from finalizing the assessment and publicly acknowledging the connection to leukemia. Until now, the EPA has kept the contents of its assessment under tight wraps. The leaked information provides a window into how the science and regulation around the chemical will finally be updated.

“Just knowing that the IRIS assessment acknowledges that formaldehyde causes myeloid leukemia is huge, regardless of what the value is,” Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said after being told about the main findings of the draft assessment. “But the numbers tell you even more. They set the tone for how the agency will proceed with risk management.”

Assessment Was “Ready to Go”

While the EPA has claimed in court that the formaldehyde assessment did not exist in a form that allowed it to be shared — and used that argument to refuse to release it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the environmental whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER — former EPA officials told The Intercept that the completed assessment not only existed but that it had also been prepared for release in early 2018.

“We had the document ready to go for review within the agency, but we were not allowed to proceed,” said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former director of the EPA Office of Research and Development, who retired from the agency in July.“Political leadership did not want me to move it forward.”

Wheeler, the former EPA administrator, was among the Trump appointees who were involved in suppressing the calculation of the myeloid leukemia risk, according to one former agency official who worked on the assessment. “The administrator would not allow us to put out that number,” the former official said, going on to explain how members of the administrator’s office, particularly his chief of staff Ryan Jackson, kept an unusually close eye on the formaldehyde assessment.

“Normally when we’re doing an assessment, they [the staff of the administrator’s office] don’t have access to the guts of it, because it’s deliberative. But they would demand that we give them pieces of the assessment, including what literature we were looking at for dose responses,” the former official said, referring to the precise relationship between exposure and cancer risk. “Then they would share it with ACC,” an acronym for the American Chemistry Council. Although the former official provided no direct evidence of the administrator’s office sending out the segments of the assessment, they said the actions of the trade group made it clear that it had reviewed the unpublished material.

“All of a sudden, after we gave the information to Ryan Jackson, there would be all this targeted activity by ACC that would basically dismiss or disprove whatever mathematical methodology that we were going to be using even though it hadn’t been published yet,” said the former official. If the EPA did share the information with the trade group, the report would be subject to release under FOIA and would not be exempt under the “deliberative process privilege,” contrary to the agency’s claim in the PEER lawsuit.

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 26: Environmental Protection Agency Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson (R) listens to Administrator Scott Pruitt testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Environment Subcommittee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. The focus of nearly a dozen federal inquiries into his travel expenses, security practices and other issues, Pruitt testified about his agency's FY2019 budget proposal. (]

Orme-Zavaleta confirmed that Jackson, who now works for the National Mining Association, played a key role in preventing the assessment from moving forward. “The ACC was in contact with Ryan a lot,” she said.

Asked about his role in the formaldehyde assessment, Jackson stated, “Following enactment of the Lautenberg Act, EPA placed formaldehyde though the risk evaluation required in that new law so formaldehyde could be directly regulated by EPA,” referring to the Trump administration’s decision to add formaldehyde to the list of chemicals to be evaluated under the Toxic Substances Control Act. That assessment has also yet to be completed or released. Jackson also stated that “I’m not contributing to anonymous rumors.”

Andrew Wheeler declined to comment. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the ACC wrote that the group “has never had access in any manner to unpublished findings from the formaldehyde draft IRIS assessment.”

Orme-Zavaleta also pointed to other Trump appointees who she said were apparently involved in suppression of the document. Among them was thedirector of the Office of Air and Radiation, Bill Wehrum, whose input Orme-Zavaleta needed to move the assessment forward. “A couple times we set up briefings for Bill Wehrum. But they canceled those briefings, and I was not given the OK to further the review within the agency.”

Dunlap Koch email to EPA

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David Dunlap, who served as deputy assistant administrator in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, also helped suppress the assessment, said Orme-Zavaleta. “When we were in the process of coming up with the priority list for IRIS assessments, a lot of those discussions were held during ‘politicals-only’ meetings, so I wasn’t there. But [Dunlap] was, he was our representative. Formaldehyde was on the list of chemicals being considered. And in November, I got back a short list of the chemicals IRIS would assess, and formaldehyde was not part of it,” she said. Dunlap worked for Koch Industries and defended formaldehyde until shortly before he joined the Trump administration in 2018. Dunlap did eventually recuse himself from work on the assessment, though only after formaldehyde was removed from the list of chemicals IRIS would be allowed to assess, according to Orme-Zavaleta. “I only received a copy of his recusal letter after I got the list of chemicals.”

David Dunlap declined to comment on the matter.

“EPA lied to us. And they lied to the court.”

Presented with information from Orme-Zavaleta and others about the completion of the assessment in 2017,PEER attorney Kevin Bell expressed anger and frustration. Bell oversees 3-year-old litigation against the EPA over the group’s Freedom of Information Act request for the assessment. In that case, the agency has insisted that it didn’t have a completed version of the document that it could publicly release.

“EPA lied to us. And they lied to the court,” said Bell. “They said, ‘We just can’t give you anything like this, because it would be totally full of all sorts of irrelevant things, so that it would totally undermine the deliberative process,’ whereas in reality they had a fully drafted document that was all set to go.”

The EPA declined to comment on Bell’s statement but did provide a broader response, saying that “EPA is committed to ensuring that science is at the backbone of everything the Agency does to deliver on our public health and environmental protection mission, and that we operate in a transparent manner to ensure public trust.” Bill Wehrum did not respond to requests for comment.

Decades of Industry Influence

The suppression of the most recent draft assessment follows many years of interference with government science on formaldehyde. IRIS began updating its original assessment of the chemical in 1997 but almost immediately ran into resistance from industry, particularly around the link to leukemia. A group called the Formaldehyde Council, Inc., which represented companies that used the chemical, began challenging the numbers in the assessment and came up with a cancer risk that was thousands of times lower than the EPA’s. Political appointees in the George W. Bush administration also helped industry postpone the release of the updated document. A 2008 Government Accountability Office report documented those delays and lamented the public health implications of having to rely on an IRIS assessment that was then 18 years old.

Yet that first assessment, completed three decades ago, is still guiding regulation. In the intervening years, both the International Agency on Cancer Research, or IARC, and National Toxicology Program, whose chemical reviews don’t have the regulatory weight of IRIS assessments, classified formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen and recognized it as a cause of leukemia. In 2010, the EPA released a draft of the updated assessment, which also found that formaldehyde caused leukemia, but did not finalize it. The ACC was harshly critical of that draft, and the agency sent the report to the National Academy of Sciences for peer review. The external agency confirmed its finding that formaldehyde causes cancer and encouraged the agency to quickly rewrite and reissue its report. But the EPA didn’t complete that work until 2016.

Vincent Cogliano, who directed the IRIS program from 2010 to 2017, said the delays during those years weren’t due to political or industry pressure. “We were really trying to get a very objective assessment released,” said Cogliano, who attributed the slow progress on the assessment in that period to the heavy workload of the small program. While Cogliano characterized some of the science around formaldehyde as complex, he said that no one on the IRIS staff disagreed about the relationship between myeloid leukemia and formaldehyde. “When I left the IRIS program in January 2017, I thought that it was ready to be released,” he said.

And yet more than four years later, the EPA has yet to release the updated IRIS assessment.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Linda Birnbaum, who directed the National Toxicology Program from 2009 to 2019. “Here there is evidence that IARC said that formaldehyde was a known human carcinogen. And we said it was a known human carcinogen and that the data was clear. And more data has come out since then, especially from the National Cancer Institute, yet no word from EPA.”

Formaldehyde was added back on to the list of chemicals being assessed on the IRIS public calendar in March. According to an EPA spokesperson, the IRIS Program anticipates releasing the draft assessment of formaldehyde for public comment and external peer review by September 30, 2022. The agency is widely expected to ask the National Academy of Sciences to weigh in on how and whether the agency should combine the cancer risk estimates for myeloid leukemia and nasopharyngeal cancer.

Orme-Zavaleta said that no one in the Biden EPA expressed hesitation about resuming work on it when she raised the issue in the first weeks of President Joe Biden’s tenure. “I asked them several times. I said, ‘I’m going to unsuspend formaldehyde, are you good with that?’ And every time, everybody said, ‘Fine, do it,’” she said. “It is moving!”

Despite the assurances, those intimately familiar with the history of formaldehyde remain guarded in their optimism that the EPA is finally about to update the assessment of one of the most significant and widespread carcinogens in the U.S.

“For decades, up to now, the industry has pretty much managed to put out all the fires,” said Sussman. “But perhaps something really significant might be about to happen.”

Update: August 19, 2021

This article has been updated with a comment from the American Chemistry Council.

xmas gift for?

expanding Mining: Despite the timing, Trump is moving to open up vast amounts of federal land to widespread mining and drilling, The New York Times reported. It is a move bound to create yet more consternation and problems for the Biden administration. The new administration, for procedural reasons as well as political ones, is bound to challenge a number of the individual sites involved. Again, whose interests are being served here?

hudbay skye ixil

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/26/hudbay-skye-canada-mining-guatemala/

https://theconversation.com/tc-energys-name-change-rebooting-canadian-pipeline-empires-132295

Canada, the recent oil price crash has distracted attention from the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline project. Buried in that dispute is the recent history of TC Energy, Coastal GasLink’s parent firm.

TransCanada changed its name to TC Energy just after the January 2019 Unist'ot'en stand-off between the RCMP and land defenders in support of a Coastal GasLink injunction. It was also within 10 days of the Unist’ot’en house group of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation alleging violations of their territorial rights at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples.

TC Energy’s name change also overlapped with the renegotiation of controversial TransCanada pipeline contracts in Mexico.

While TransCanada says the change would better represent its increasing activities in Mexico and the United States, it also distanced the firm from controversial projects, among them the Keystone XL project that aimed to expand the Keystone pipeline system in Canada and the U.S.

Keystone XL a flashpoint

Keystone XL has been a key target of global environmental activism against the oilsands and, for a time, resulted in Alberta oil being labelled the Earth’s most carbon-intensive and dirtiest fossil fuel. It also turned public attention to the violation of Indigenous territorial rights in which North American pipeline projects are mired.

[pix]

tC Energy now acknowledges that Keystone XL may never be built.

As opposition to Alberta’s oilsands, associated pipelines, environmental injustice and carbon emissions have ramped up in Canada over the past 15 years, so has North American production of natural gas for energy and export. In this shift, TC Energy’s role as a conduit for U.S. natural gas to Mexico is notable.

TC Energy’s name change also dissociates the firm from Canada. In Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America,Canada’s human rights reputation has plummeted due to violence associated with Canadian mining companies.

Negative image

Canada’s negative brand image in Latin America emerges from a long history of the Canadian government backing its extractivesector at home and abroad. TC Energy’s activities across North America are heavily financed by Canadian entities, including Export Development Canada, private banks and a network of influential board members who lobby the Canadian government for financial and diplomatic support.

Read more: The role of Canadian mining in the plight of Central American migrants

Mexicohad been a net exporter of hydrocarbons to the United States for three decades. But the U.S. shale-gas boom and Mexican energy reform shifted energy trade dramatically and helped foster Mexico’s increasing dependence on American natural gas.

The pattern is reminiscent of Mexico’s abrupt dependence on U.S. maize following the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico shifted from being self-sufficient in this food staple to becoming dependent on imports. The same process has transpired in hydrocarbons, compromising Mexican energy sovereignty.

The privatization of Mexico’s energy sector, which proceeded at a slow creep for decades and accelerated drastically in 2013, has been a flashpoint for protest throughout the country due to high fuel costs.

Helped AMLO get elected

It helped elect opposition leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the Mexican presidency in 2018 and factored into the renegotiation of NAFTA.

Read more: Why Mexico's historic elections may bring about big change

TC Energy is among the firms facilitating the growing American and Canadian involvement in the Mexican oil and gas sector. A TransCanada representative was the co-chair of the intergovernmental Canada-Mexico Partnership’s energy sub-committee in 2016.

While TransCanada described a welcoming environment when it shifted activities to Mexico, this has soured with increasing opposition, including Indigenous mobilization, against pipeline projects in Mexico.

Shared risks across the continent

Shortly after López Obrador’s election in 2018, but before he took office, TransCanada suspended pipeline projects in four states due to protests. López Obrador has renegotiated terms associated with various pipeline contracts, including TC Energy, reportedly saving Mexico US$4.5 billion dollars.

In both Canada and Mexico the ecological and financial risks of pipeline projects are shouldered by local residents and pension holders.

As Canadian investment in Mexico’s energy sector has increased, the global financial hazards of locked-in hydrocarbon consumption, which are risky given their financial implications for carbon mitigation measures, have also been more broadly distributed to Mexicans.

In northeastern British Columbia, earthquakes from natural gas fracking threaten dams and pose a risk to the area’s residents, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The carbon emissions from the first phase of the LNG Canada project that would receive fracked gas via Coastal GasLink are estimated at 3.45 megatonnes per year.

This is a large portion of the province’s future emissions. British Columbia has said it would cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, to about 13 megatonnes.

The Coastal GasLink project also poses risks to those whose pensions finance the project if the project is unable to proceed.

In December, TC Energy sold a 65 per cent interest in Coastal GasLink to a consortium involving AIMCo (Alberta Investment Management Corp.) and KKR, a private U.S. financial company operating in partnership with the National Pension Service of Korea. AIMCo manages the funds that secure future income for more than 368,000 public sector employees and pensioners in Alberta and the rest of Canada.

Read more: Coastal GasLink and Canada's pension fund colonialism

In recent years, the inter-governmental Canada-Mexico Partnership has promoted Alberta’s approach to securing “right of way from Indigenous peoples to Mexico. This entails replicating the divisive model that industry has used to get consent from Indigenous peoples in Canada in Mexico.

Given TC Energy’s trajectory over the past decade this is problematic.

TC Energy’s behaviour in Wet'suwet'en has resulted in a nationwide crisis. The Canadian government and Canadian firms should not facilitate the export of those behaviours to Mexico.

tags: Indigenous

Mexico

Keystone XL pipeline

First Nations

Andrés Manuel López Obrador

Wet'suwet'en First Nation

TransCanada

Wet'suwet'en

Coastal GasLink

Alberta oilsands

no lnx

https://time.com/5638438/global-witness-environmental-activists-murdered/

Across the world calls to protect the planet are growing louder, yet standing up against the deleterious effects of mining, logging and agribusiness continues to be fatal, U.K.-based watchdog Global Witness said in a new report Tuesday.

By sheer number, the Philippines was found to be the deadliest country for environmental defenders in 2018, with 30 environmentalists murdered. But around the globe, more than three defenders were killed each week of last year, the group’s latest report Enemies of the State? says.

“These are ordinary people trying to protect their homes and livelihoods, and standing up for the health of our planet,” Global Witness said in a release.

While the total last year, 164 deaths, represents a drop from the 2017 peak of 201, the group notes that non-lethal means of quashing dissent are also rampant.

“Countless more people were threatened, arrested or thrown in jail for daring to oppose the governments or companies seeking to profit from their land,” it said. It is common for businesses and authorities to “use courts and legal systems to silence those who threaten their interests,” the report notes.

The report calls renewed international attention to the bloodshed that has occurred under President Rodrigo Duterte’s watch. Soon after coming to power in 2016, Duterte declared a deadly crackdown on drugs and his administration has been mired in accusations of human rights abuses and violence. In 2017, Global Witness said 48 environmental defenders were killed on the archipelagic nation, the highest ever recorded in an Asian country. In both 2017 and 2018, a large number of those deaths were linked to agribusiness.

[pix PI protest]

globally, mining was responsible for the largest number of killings—43 deaths—while conflicts over water projects surged at 17 deaths.

Across sectors, demand for consumer products—from food to jewelry to mobile phones—drives the persecution, the report says.

Global Witness warned that despite a dip in total deaths, the overall climate for environmental activists does not look to be improving. “Signs are worrying that the situation for environmental and land defenders will worsen,” it says. For example, Brazil’s strongman leader Jair Bolsonaro has pledged to open indigenous reserves for commercial development and in the U.S., President Donald Trump has sought to open more land to oil and gas companies.

And in the U.K., anti-fracking activists were targeted with terrorism related charges carrying potential life sentences, charges far more serious than are usually brought against protesters.

"This is a phenomenon seen around the world: land and environmental defenders are declared terrorists, locked up or hit with paralyzing legal attacks, for defending their rights, or simply for living on lands that are coveted by others,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said in a statement.

Companies and governments must act to stop land and resource conflicts, the report says.

“As we hurtle towards climate breakdown, it has never been more important to stand with those who are trying to defend their land and our planet against the reckless destruction being meted out by the rich and powerful,” Alice Harrison, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said.

1119

My name is Wendsler Nosie Sr. I'm the former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and a member of Apache-Stronghold.

Five years ago, powerful politicians knelt at the altar of greed and arranged permits for Resolution Copper, a multinational corporation, to drill and extract copper beneath sacred holy lands of the Apache.

For thousands of years, Apaches have come to Oak Flats to pray. Today, we face the possibility that our holy ground will become a giant crater.

We condemn the immoral, racist, and unconstitutional seizure and sale of Oak Flat.

Oak Flat is one of the most holy places in the Apache religious tradition, likened to how Christians and Jews regard Mt. Sinai. Resolution Copper's plan would create a crater below Oak Flat two miles wide and 1,000 feet deep.

The U.S. Forest Servicehas moved forward with an environmental impact statement and has refused to consider the Apaches' religious freedom claim, which would stop this destructive mining project. They have declared war on our religion. And a threat to the practice of any religious tradition in the United States is a threat to U.S. Constitution and the religious liberty of all people of faith.

The forces that seek to exploit Apache holy land for profit are the same forces that pass racist voter suppression laws, militarize our borders, deny health care to millions, poison our water, and pretend to promote a "pro-life" agenda. This is why we call for a moral revolution of values with the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.” —J. Paul Getty

The big driver of the world economy is a plundering process where powerful corporations loot the natural resources of low-income countries. These highly influential multinational corporations (MNCs) facilitate the expatriation of profits and natural assets from resource-rich but capital-poor countries by engaging in a wide range of morally egregious profit maximization practices, such as:

Intentionally establishing operations in countries where it is possible to exploit low-wage workers.
Investing in locations where it is possible to take advantage of regressive tax codes.
Ensuring business-friendly production-sharing agreements with local governments.

These predatory practices carried out by MNCs deprive developing countries from being able to benefit equitably from their own natural resource supply and ultimately undermine their pursuit of emancipatory economic development policies.

How do systematic underdevelopment and exploitation of developing countries and their peoples occur? Two common strategies of corporate plunder through global extractive industries are rent-seeking and wage exploitation Extractive industries are the starting point of the main drivers in the global economy. They deal with the development, extraction, and sale of exhaustible (nonrenewable) natural resources such as the mining of metals and minerals and the extraction of oil and natural gas, according to the Encyclopedia of Environmental Change, edited by John A. Matthews.

Global extraction of natural resources has increased with the onset of the process of capitalist industrialization, growing at an astounding rate in the past 50 years. Global extraction of primary materials more than tripled to 92 billion tonnes in 2017 from 27 billion tonnes in 1970, an annual average growth of 2.6 percent, according to a 2019 report conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme-hosted International Resource Panel (IRP).

For many countries in the Global South, extractive industries are an important aspect of their economy; yet, in many instances, low-income countries only retain a small fraction of the total wealth that is generated from their domestic natural resource production.

The highly capital-intensive nature of the extractive industry requires expensive upfront costs as well as ongoing investment to replace, modernize, and expand equipment and facilities, which forces communities and governments of poor countries to rely on foreign firms for financial assistance. As a result, such countries are prevented from being able to fully absorb the financial returns generated from their national resource endowments.

The continent of Africa in particular has historically accounted for a significant portion of global extractive production and supply, serving as a catalyst for the economic development of the Global North through low-wage labor and corporate ownership of the region’s natural resources.

Who Controls the Global Extractive and Mining Industries?

Over the past several decades, multinational corporations have emerged as the primary actors in facilitating global trade and natural resource extraction, yielding tremendous profits. Large corporations, which account for the bulk of international trade and resource extraction, have experienced rising rents under hyperglobalization, leading to heightened profits. This was confirmed by empirical analysis of the largest 2,000 MNCs, which revealed that the share of profits of extractive MNCs rose from 9.3 percent in 1996 to 13.3 percent in 2015.

Meanwhile, a separate study, which measured the influence of corporate power in the global supply chain (GSC), estimated that about 80 percent of global trade (in terms of gross exports) is linked to the international production networks of transnational corporations.

The trade, production and ownership of the extractive industries have become particularly concentrated among a small number of exporters, importers and MNCs.

Recent evidence of rising market concentration among MNCs within certain sectors of the extractive industry, particularly the mining industry, has prompted concerns among some economists regarding the links between increased market concentration, income inequality, and rent-seeking According to a 2018 study conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) rent-seeking practicesby MNCs on the rise in key sectors of the global economy have become a major driver of global income inequality.

The term “rent-seeking” is used by economists to describe a type of profit-making scheme, the sort made possible when individuals or corporate entities are granted exclusive or majority rights to natural and/or non-natural assets.

Thus, the phrase is frequently associated with monopoly (or quasi-monopoly) rent, a form of “unearned” income, which can be generated when large corporate entities exclude competitors from entering the market for the services or products that they supply ... ==

some links lost

meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.” —J. Paul Getty

The big driver of the world economy is a plundering process where powerful corporations loot the natural resources of low-income countries.

These highly influential multinational corporations (MNCs) facilitate the expatriation of profits and natural assets from resource-rich but capital-poor countries by engaging in a wide range of morally egregious profit maximization practices, such as:

Intentionally establishing operations in countries where it is possible to exploit low-wage workers.

Investing in locations where it is possible to take advantage of regressive tax codes.

Ensuring business-friendly production-sharing agreements with local governments.

Extractive Industries

Extractive industries are the starting point of the main drivers in the global economy. They deal with the development, extraction, and sale of exhaustible (nonrenewable) natural resources such as the mining of metals and minerals and the extraction of oil and natural gas, according to the Encyclopedia of Environmental Change, edited by John A. Matthews.

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As a result, such countries are prevented from being able to fully absorb the financial returns generated from their national resource endowments.

Who Controls the Global Extractive and Mining Industries?

Over the past several decades, multinational corporations have emerged as the primary actors in facilitating global trade and natural resource extraction, yielding tremendous profits.

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Large corporations, which account for the bulk of international trade and resource extraction, have experienced rising rents under hyperglobalization, leading to heightened profits. This was confirmed by empirical analysis of the largest 2,000 MNCs, which revealed that the share of profits of extractive MNCs rose from 9.3 percent in 1996 to 13.3 percent in 2015.

The trade, production and ownership of the extractive industries have become particularly concentrated among a small number of exporters, importers and MNCs.

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According to a 2018 study conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) rent-seeking practices by MNCs on the rise in key sectors of the global economy have become a major driver of global income inequality.

Monopoly Rents in the Global Mining Industry

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A potential entrant into the global mining market would have to invest at least several billion U.S. dollars to launch a competitive, large-scale mining operation.

Large-scale mining, which accounts for 95 percent of global mining production, is carried out by private corporations with various ownership structures (from publicly traded to state owned) and sizes: companies range from 150 or so “senior” mining companies with over $3 billion in assets to thousands of smaller “junior” companies.

The data above is largely consistent with the findings from a 2018 report carried out by global auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which showed that the capitalization threshold to rank among the world’s top 40 largest mining corporations is estimated to be at around $5.4 billion.

The capital-intensive nature of the industry poses significant barriers for entry into the market, causing a high degree of market concentration in the global mining sector.

This claim is further supported by a report conducted by Chatham House, which found that jointly, the four largest companies in iron ore, bauxite, and copper mining control 41 percent, 41 percent and 31 percent, respectively, of global mine production.

This data presents a pattern of quasi-monopolistic market patterns among a group of powerful MNCs in the global mining industry. This trend has limited the ownership over the share of rents generated from the global mining industry to a small number of powerful and highly profitable corporations.

Political Rents, the Rentier State and Corporate Rentiers

While a “significant proportion of [corporate] rents has… accrued through monopolies or quasi-monopolies,” as the UNCTAD study reports, some income (rents) can also be generated by what is referred to as “‘political rents’ derived from the ability to influence particular aspects and details of government policies in ways that disproportionately” favor corporate entities.

The recent growth in global corporate rent-seeking practices by MNCs is partially facilitated through what is referred to as the “rentier state,” which is comprised of various public institutions and legal policies, including: cheap exploration permits, flexible labor laws, and low tax rates that benefit the interests of “rentiers” (corporate investors).

Tax revenues, specifically from the mining industry, have tremendous potential to improve the quality of life of citizens, particularly the poorest segments of the population; however, corporate rentiers (MNCs) perceive tariffs and levies as a financial burden that will inevitably reduce their profit margins.

For instance, in 2011, the Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) corporation, which is the “largest private employer in Zambia,” with an estimated 16,000 employees, only paid $105 million in taxes on “its $2.16 billion worth of production, amounting to an effective tax rate of less than 5 percent.”

Sadly, over the past several decades, many mineral-rich rentier-states have entered a downward spiral in an attempt to incentivize foreign investment, offering MNCs low tax rates and favorable production-sharing agreements.

The loss of developing countries’ capacities to retain earnings due to “political rents” accrued by corporate investors has been extensively documented and is particularly evident in the Zambian mining industry.

Wage Exploitation

While not strictly classified as rent-seeking, multinational mining companies engage in yet another form of corporate plunder, which takes place through wage exploitation.

Wage exploitation is a process that ensures increased profit margins for corporate owners and any potential company shareholders, at the expense of workers.

In empirical research conducted by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we observed extensive levels of wage exploitation in the Zambian mining industry, which is one of the world’s most resource-endowed countries with vast mineral deposits.

Despite the county’s immense mineral reserves, our research revealed that in exchange for their labor, many Zambian copper miners are paid next to nothing for their services.

In order to get a sense of wage exploitation and the general labor conditions in the Zambian mining industry, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research spoke with three non-permanent contract miners working at the Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) owned mine.

In our discussions, all three men reported that their current wages prevented them from being able to fulfill their own basic needs and those of their families.*

“The wages that we receive are well below the cost of the basic food basket” (defined by the World Bank as “the food bundle corresponding to a minimum caloric requirement”). “If you look at our salaries, we are earning no more than US$172 [per month],” Miner 1 told Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research in an interview conducted last January.

In 2018, Zambia’s monthly minimum wage stood around US$176.4, making it the fifth-highest average minimum wage in the Southern African region, according to statistics from the World Bank.

“So, we are actually earning less than the national minimum wage, which makes it nearly impossible to survive,” Miner 1 went on to say.

Technically, it is a legal offense not to meet minimum wage demands; however, penalties are rarely imposed on foreign multinational companies that violate the country’s national labor code.

These miners’ testimonies are largely consistent with the empirical research and the subsequent calculations that we carried out in order to determine wage exploitation in the Zambian mining industry.

Our calculations were based on two separate collective bargaining agreements, which detailed the monthly wages earned by KCM permanent contract employees and the monthly wages obtained by temporary contract workers.

Based on the empirical data collected, we observed an extraordinary gap in monetary compensation between the top executives of Vedanta (KCM’s parent company) and the average annual wages earned by KCM permanent contract miners and temporary contract hires.

For example, according to our research, in 2018 Chairman Anil Agarwal earned around 584 times as much as temporary contract workers and close to 164 times as much as a KCM miner with a permanent contract.

Labor strikes in Zambia’s mining sector are commonplace. In 2017, business operations for KCM in Chililabombwe were brought to a standstill after workers went on strike over salary adjustments.

“I think that most of us miners believe that companies like KCM are in fact stealing from us. They are stepping on our rights, and as a result we are living in abject poverty,” Miner 2 said when asked about his perception of the multinational mining firms operating in his country.

With nearly 60 percent of the country’s population living below the poverty line, it seems completely reasonable to suggest that Zambian people are deserving of a greater share of the lucrative financial returns generated by their country’s mining industry.

In summary, it is our hope that this research helped illustrate how the combination of both wage exploitation in the context of the Zambian mining industry along with corporate rent-seeking practices in the global extractive sector contribute to the larger pattern of underdevelopment in the Global South.

*For the sake of their physical safety and job security, the three individuals requested to remain anonymous. For the purpose of this text we refer to those quoted as miner 1 and 2.

Nate Singham is based in São Paulo, Brazil, where he works as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute

...?

Court Blocks Gold Mining in Yellowstone National Park

Canadian company cannot carry out exploratory drilling for gold mining on land just north of Yellowstone National Park, a Montana district court ruled Monday.

Protecting the public lands around Yellowstone has been a bipartisan effort, as Earthjustice, which argued the case against the Canadian company, pointed out in a press release. Former Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke banned mining on public lands near Yellowstone for 20 years in October 2018, and this was made permanent in March when President Donald Trump signed a massive, bi-partisan public lands bill. But Lucky Minerals Inc. had sought permission to mine on private land in Emigrant Gulch.

"The court's ruling is a critical piece in protecting Yellowstone's Gateway from the menace of gold mining," Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) Executive Director Caroline Byrd said in the press release. "The Trump administration, the Obama administration, Congress, the Forest Service, the Park County Commission, thousands of citizens and more than 420 Montana businesses all agree, Yellowstone is more valuable than gold."

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition joined with the Park County Environmental Council to challenge Lucky Minerals. Park County District Judge Brenda Gilbert ruled in their favor, invalidating the Montana Department of Environmental Quality's (DEQ) permit for the project,The Associated Press reported.

Gilbert had already ruled in May 2018 that the DEQ permit did not consider the drilling's impact on water quality and wildlife, according to GYC and Earthjustice. However, a provision of the Montana Environmental Policy Act prohibits judges from blocking projects because of inadequate environmental analyses, The Associated Press reported....

There are many ways in which Donald Trump hasrewarded companies while eroding environmental policies, but the mining industry in particular has benefited spectacularly. Not only have there been specific gifts to the coal industry in terms of relaxing rules around coal ash retention ponds and completely scrapping the Clean Power Plan, but mining in general has been handed giant cash grabs in the form of additional public lands opened to mining and relaxed rules around dumping mining waste in streams. And those are just the big, easily visible changes. CNN also found that there has been a 60 percent drop in inspections and an even larger decrease in the number of cases forwarded to the Justice Department for prosecution.

For polluters, Donald Trump represents a free lunch. For taxpayers, not so much.

As *Mother Jones* reports, the potential environmental damage caused by mining is immense. And since rules around cleanup have often allowed companies to “self bond”—making a promise to conduct a proper clean up without actually acquiring insurance to cover that future cost—failing companies can leave taxpayers holding both the bill and an environmental disaster. For example, a single abandoned gold mine in the mountains south of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana has left the area with a legacy of discolored water so polluted with acid that contact with it “makes skin burn and turn red.” After 20 years of attempted cleanup, the bill for dealing with this single mine is approaching $100 million, and the cleanup is still in early stages. The final bill is inestimable, and no approach is likely to restore the pristine water the area enjoyed previous to mining.

Before mining begins, companies are expected to set aside money to cover reclamation, based on cost estimates made by the Interior Department. Experience has demonstrated that the number provided is often far too low to begin with, but companies have routinely appealed before agreeing to even lower numbers in arbitration or in court. And even then, the ability of larger companies to “self bond” can mean that the supposed money set aside can amount to nothing at all when the bill comes due.

The total of reclamation costs already carried by taxpayers is in the billions, and the issue is only getting worse as deregulatory efforts like those instituted by Trump make it easy to centralize the gains, and externalize the costs.

===

ref mojo

Center for Public Integrity.

The remnants of an abandoned gold and silver mine scar the Little Rocky Mountains just south of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana, bleeding polluted orange water into streams that meander through the reservation. Warren Morin remembers drinking the once-pristine water while he was growing up in the 1970s. Now it’s so acidic it makes his skin burn and turn red on contact.

Pegasus Gold Corp., a Canadian company that owned that mine and several others in the state, went bankrupt and folded 20 years ago. That left a legacy of water pollution and a cleanup bill nearing $100 million—with no end in sight.

“They took the heart of the mountains away from us,” said Morin, chair of the tribal council’s natural resources committee.

Pegasus isn’t an isolated case. Especially in the drought-prone West, the outdated and opaque regulatory system meant to ensure money is available to restore water and land at gold, copper and other hardrock mines often falls short. Regulators with insufficient funding are tasked with cleaning up a mess left years ago by now-defunct companies. The agencies that required those firms to set aside money underestimated how much it would take, in some cases acquiescing to companies pressing for lower amounts.

Pollution seeping from these mines regularly contaminates waterways. There’s often no end date to treatment costs, billions of dollars of which have been shouldered by taxpayers.

Contributing to this situation is Zortman-Landusky, the mine abutting the Fort Belknap reservation that’s the most troublesome of three former Pegasus operations. Brook trout began dying off when miners blasted the mountains to expose ore and have since disappeared from large swaths of the streams, locals said. Beavers and frogs are gone, too. Arsenic and other heavy metals stain water at a nearby treatment plant unnatural colors.....

Whether its health and climate effects from burning coal, or the acid and toxins spread in recovering metals, the mining industry is utterly dependent on the ability to collect its gains and dodge the real costs. “Hard rock” mining for metals can leave streams not just filled with skin-burning acid, but saturated with lead, mercury, and other metals. While those things are picked up as the acidic water flows through the leftover rubble of the mining, another extremely toxic metal—arsenic—is directly used in recovering gold from ore. An ounce of gold may already seem costly, but the real cost can be measured in vanished fish, dead wildlife, and mountain landscapes turned into toxic horrors.

The sheer scale of some mining operations has so far covered up the size of the difference between what’s been put aside and what’s actually needed. Copper mines in Utah and Arizona have been in near continuous operation since the 1870s. The waste in both areas is measured in the hundreds of billions of tons. How close is either of these states to having even a small fraction of what it would take to attempt to clean up these sites? It’s hard to tell. Most states are allowed “primacy,” the ability to manage their own reclamation programs, and the accounts on what’s been set aside and how it’s been secured are far from consistent.

But while those huge old mines hang out there, the huge new mines are no better, not when rules allow them to pick up federal lands at bargain prices, and mine them with not just reduced concern about environmental issues, but almost no chance of having to pay for it in court even if they’re caught. More permits, fewer inspections, even fewer prosecutions, and companies allowed to walk away from the reclamation cost after owners have pocketed the profits: It’s no wonder these companies love Donald Trump.

wASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday nominated a former astronaut and longtime oil industry geologist to lead the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

James Reilly, 63, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, spent 13 years at NASA, flying on three space shuttle missions between 1998 and 2007 and logging more than 35 days in space. Before that, Reilly was a chief geologist for nearly 15 years at Dallas-based oil and gas company Enserch Exploration, Inc., where he focused on exploring offshore areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

That work “resulted in the discovery of over 115 million barrels of oil and over 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas,” he writes on his LinkedIn page.

Along with his time in space, Reilly spent approximately 22 days in deep submergence vehicles, according to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

“Dr. Reilly currently serves United States and allied militaries as a subject matter expert on space operations, and he is a technical advisor supporting the National Security Space Institute of the U.S. Air Force,” the White House noted in a release Friday.

Reilly will replace acting director William Werkheiser.

USGS is the scientific arm of the Interior Department and is responsible for monitoring and studying natural disasters, including earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, as well as managing water, energy and other natural resources.

If confirmed to the post by the Senate, Reilly will play a key role in the administration’s efforts to boost America’s production of critical minerals. In a December report, USGS found that the U.S. relies on foreign sources for a majority of the minerals essential in manufacturing, as Reuters reported.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has said the country’s reliance on foreign minerals poses national and economic security risks.

“Other nations are far ahead of us with mapping of their mineral resources, leading to private sector investment overseas rather than right here at home,” Zinke said in a statements last month when he signed a secretarial order aimed at identifying domestic sources. “Drafting a complete topographical and geographic survey of the United States is exactly the kind of task the USGS was created to do.”

...“I’m down in Phoenix Arizona, I’m about to go on stage to be the opening keynote speaker for the National Mining Association Spring Board of Directors meeting,” Carroll stated in a video he posted on Monday morning outside of the event. “This is a pretty hardcore meeting. I’ve got the CEO’s of most of the major world’s mining companies in the room. I’ve got Ryan Zinke, the Minister of the Interior for the U.S. government. I’ve got the Governor of Arizona in the room.”

The Associated Pressfirst revealed Zinke was scheduled to meet with NMAin Arizona on Monday, but not did specify any further details.

This is not the first time NMA has hosted key officials in the Trump Administration. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attended the NMA Spring board meeting last year in Naples, Florida, according to Pruitt’s schedule released by the New York Times. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta spoke at the NMA 2017 fall board meeting, according to a report by the Washington Post . That event took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.. According to The Intercept, Zinke was initially scheduled to address the event at the Trump International but could not attend due to travel–Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt attended in his place.

The Trump administration has delivered numerous wins for the coal industry since taking office. The Environmental Protection Agency is replacing two major rules from the Obama Administration that would significantly impact the coal industry: the Clean Power Plan, and Waters of the United States (“WOTUS”). Secretary Zinke’s Interior Department has repealed the Obama-era ban on coal-leasing on federal lands, and reversed the closing of a loophole that would have led to higher royalty payments being paid by coal companies extracting on public lands.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, NMA spent more than $1.9 million lobbying expenditures in 2017.

But with McCain's ailing health, right now the committee is being chaired by vehement climate change denier Senator Inhofe. He's letting these riders in.

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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060084255

Trade, mining proposals in limbo in Senate mess

Nick Sobczyk, E&E News reporter

E&E Daily: Wednesday, June 13, 2018

The Senate defense authorization bill yesterday hit a procedural snag on several amendments, including a proposal to limit President Trump's authority to set tariffs.

The snafu could mean that a pair of controversial mining amendments filed by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) never get a vote.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has been pushing for an add-on to the National Defense Authorization Act that would require congressional approval of any tariffs imposed by Trump under the national security provisions contained in Section 232 of a 1962 trade statute.

But it has run into "blue slip" issues because of the Constitution's origination clause, which requires bills that raise revenue start in the House.

That led Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), managing the bill on the floor in the absence of Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), to object to Corker's attempt to offer the amendment and remedy the blue-slip problem yesterday.

Corker, in an impassioned floor speech, said he was disappointed that members of his own party were refusing to vote on the bill because it would "upset the president."

"I can't believe it!" he said. "I would bet that 95 percent of people on this side of the aisle support, intellectually, this amendment. I would bet that. I would bet more than 95 percent."

Industry, enviros fight over mining add-ons in authorization bill

Nick Sobczyk and Dylan Brown, E&E News reporters

Published: Tuesday, June 12, 2018

The Senate is set to advance controversial legislation to pave the way for a major copper-nickel mine in Minnesota as part of its annual defense authorization bill.