The title of this article is misleading and is what I would expect to see on some envirowacko blog. It is not a “gold mine”, it is a COPPER MINE - “80 billion pounds of copper”. The envirowackos always use “gold mine” in a title to give the impression it is greedy miners out to destroy the earth.
We are already dependent on foreign oil, do we really need to be dependent on foreign copper too?
You are so right; it is misleading. I forgot to point that out in my original comments. Good catch. America has everything it needs to be totally self-sufficient AND export huge amounts to the world, as we used to do in agriculture.
$500 billion can pay for a lot of protection up-front.
Where, by the way, were the salmon breeding during the last ice age a few thousand years ago? I saw some biologist talking about the danger of underground movement of waters in this area-- really? Through permafrost?