“open up the mines in CA, which still have lots of gold in them,”
They’re probably full of rare bats and rats that need protecting/s;)
They closed them during WWII to allow the man power to go into the military and then failed to open them after the war. When some people tried to open several of them up again naturally the greenies stopped it saying that the chemicals used for mining were terrible things, thus ensuring that thousands of jobs were never opened up in Northern CA.