What Texas is to oil & gas, Arizona is to copper, and soon lithium.
These two minerals will form a significant part of the coming, all-electric macrocosm. A world economy based upon clean, fully electric systems of transportation, manufacturing, distribution, agriculture, tourism & travel, healthcare, et al. They’re embedded EVERYWHERE in this new global materials paradigm; anything electric, anything battery-powered, will require vast quantities of copper & lithium.
Humanity will clean its air, its water, its land—of pollutants long feared to be permanent. And while it’s not over yet, the beginning of the end of oil’s dominance is upon us. The technical updates on advances in electrical energy storage, use & generation, and concurrent material science—-are daily occurrences.
Major national laboratories & universities worldwide keep open-databases of freely obtainable intellectual properties, available for any serious & capable groups to commercialize. It’s genuinely astounding the amount of low-cost opportunities for technology transfer development in these areas. It has never happened before in mankind’s whole history.
But Arizona’s Hard-Left, enviro-zealots would totally remove this unique economic arrow from the state’s developmental quiver. Their goal is nothing short of shutting down all mining in the United States.
And this legalistic Godzilla of US environmental lawsuits, a Druid-like, religio-reductionist collection of NeoPagan, big-$$$ opportunists …are headquartered in Tucson (where else?).
For them, stopping all responsible US mining actions pays off, and it pays off BIG ($$$).
Known innocently, and with such a high-minded veneer, as the “Center for Biological Diversity”, (CBD), their name should really be Shakedown, Inc. It puts the actions of known Hard-Left shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Morris Dees, et al to shame. Compared to CBD, those guys are pikers, bullying kids for lunch money on the playground.
According to their “Non-Profit” tax returns, CBD is a serious 8-figure sized yearly operation, funded largely by acquired booty, clueless giant foundations, uber-rich Arizona locals, and out-of-state millionaire & billionaire globo-leftists like George Soros & Tom Steyer.
Their local Tucson execs collect more than $250,000 yearly in paid compensation, and Lord-knows-how-much in deferred comp and retirement benefits, (a standard method of milking a non-profit). Shakedowns (i.e. “Legal Returns & Settlements”) and “Lobbying” (read: political payola) are entries for 7 figs each.
Tim Steller, the anti-growth Enfant terrible of the local RedStar news rag, is on speed-dial for the CBD policy wing. And Tucson’s new lady mayor is an employee alumnus. The messianic Ms. Romero, now as Mayor of the “Dirty T”, is the perfect foil for CBD’s ultimate aim: to stop all mining in North America. Anyone who doubts this is just fooling themselves.
Steller penned 2 aircover-apologeias for Romero as City councilor, both stories spun to pooh-pooh the recognized fact Romero’s actions torpedoed Grand Canyon University and the Rosemont mine. Also, Steller often rails against German Larrea Velasco, a Mexican billionaire who controls mining, rail, and port assets in Sonora, and a man who could be very important to Arizona’s future trade interests.
CBD has their puppet Steller nip at Velasco because at present, they can’t touch him. Must be some kind of fund-raising ploy to attract Velasco’s enemies (?)
So there you have it, an anti-growth, shakedown-motivated alliance between CBD, the local print-press, and City government. All coming at a moment in history & technology, when just the opposite should be happening. It’s crazy Arizona’s business establishment cluelessly allows this.
But hey, it’s the Tucson political-media nexus…is anyone really surprised?
Sellers is a South Park Republican who lives in incorporated Oro Valley. His background is federal tech-transfer commercialization. He is on Facebook.