By MERILEE DANNEMANN
Triple Spaced Again
© 2023 New Mexico News Services
Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, made thought-provoking remarks about the complex relationship of our national security, the environment, and the global implications of how countries meet their energy needs.
He caught my attention when he mentioned the mining of rare-earth elements because New Mexico has deposits of some of them. The New Mexico deposits have been studied by our Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, affiliated with New Mexico Tech.
Burgum is one of the lesser-known Republican candidates for president. He was talking to a friendly audience in New Hampshire. I happened to see this on C-SPAN.
The rare-earth issue was not the central point of his talk but was part of a larger train of logic related to national security. While it might seem like an obscure issue, it was a valuable insight into what a presidential candidate considers worth talking about.
Burgum said essential raw materials are mined in places like Africa, where there are few or no environmental considerations, so the environmental damage is greater than if they were mined in the United States where environmental safeguards would provide some protection.
If we care about the environment, but we require such resources, is there an argument for mining them here in the U.S. where the impact will be smaller? Are we being less than ethical if we ignore the damage done elsewhere?
And would we be safer if we relied on ourselves for these essential resources rather than faraway countries?
Rare-earth elements are pretty darn important to our modern economy. The American Geosciences Institute says they “are necessary components of more than 200 products across a wide range of applications, especially high-tech consumer products, such as cellular telephones, computer hard drives, electric and hybrid vehicles, and flat-screen monitors and televisions.”
But some impacts of mining in New Mexico have been genuinely nasty. We have scars in the earth from open pits and health effects, which have been especially hard on Native Americans. Would we ever want to encourage more of it? It is easier on our nerves if we let mining poison the water someplace else.
I don’t know whether Gov. Burgum was right or wrong on the facts. He may have been completely off base. However, that is the kind of substantive, policy-oriented discussion we should be hearing from all presidential candidates.
When Burgum switched topics, the next subject was government administration, and how he saved his state money and improved the performance of state agencies with zero-based budgeting. I don’t know his performance record, but I did notice that this successful capitalist talked about making government institutions more effective, not dismantling them.
Burgum had the podium for an hour. He had control over his choice of subject matter. Nobody was asking the tricky questions we hear in presidential debates, which tell us only about the quick wit of candidates, not their capability to run the world’s most powerful nation. I would like to see more serious conversation from more of the candidates.
Millions of voters, including Republican voters, want someone other than Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for president, but so far Republican voters have not agreed on which candidate. I hope voters in the early primary states will attend many more in-depth presentations by those candidates and give the country an informed choice.
New Hampshire has the early-primary privilege. New Mexico won’t see most of these candidates in person, even though New Hampshire’s population of 1.4 million is much smaller than ours. By the time of our primaries, the nominations will likely be decided. That’s the result of a system that allows a minority of voters to make critical national choices.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.
