Greens Wage Long Fight Against Copper Mine in Arizona Mountains

[douglas9]

TUCSON (CN) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illegally green-lighted destruction of thousands of acres of habitat for one of the last wild jaguars in the United States for an Arizona copper mine, the Center for Biological Diversity said in a federal lawsuit Monday.

The open pit mine, planned for more than a decade on the eastern flank of the Santa Rita Mountains about 40 miles from the Mexican border, would obliterate about 3,600 acres of designated critical habitat for the jaguar. It would also reverse the groundwater flow under part of Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, which is home to endangered Gila chub and Gila topminnows, said Marc Fink, a senior attorney for the center.

It also would hurt the endangered ocelot, northern Mexican gartersnake, Chiricahua leopard frog, southwestern willow flycatcher, and western yellow-billed cuckoo, all in violation of the Endangered Species Act, according to the complaint.

“All of these species are listed as endangered for a reason,” Fink said.

The mountainous area north of Sonoita, Arizona and southeast of Tucson is in a transitional zone between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan desert.

https://www.courthousenews.com/greens-wage-long-fight-copper-mine-arizona-mountains/

[hunter]

1. There are excellent alternatives to copper for plumbing...

... not so much for household wiring. Aluminum wiring works for large scale projects maintained by professionals, but it proved dangerous in homes, causing many fires. It's possible that modern material sciences, electronics (such as arc-fault circuit interuptors), and low energy LED lighting and other electrical appliances, could make aluminum household wiring viable, but there's a tremendously bad reputation to overcome, along with an expectation that ordinary wall outlets will deliver at least 1.5 kilowatts.

Copper is used in cars too. There's about 150 pounds of copper in pure electric cars like the Tesla, three or four times more copper than a modern fuel powered car uses. Older fuel powered cars used a lot of copper too. They had copper radiators and heater cores, etc..

Modern renewable energy systems tend to use a lot of copper too, requiring more copper per kilowatt hour than conventional power plants.

The sad thing about this U.S. copper mine is that it might be much less destructive to the natural environment than copper mines in places with very few or no environmental regulations.

I often think about what it would take to provide every human on earth with safe comfortable housing. Providing everyone with a big suburban house with copper plumbing and wiring, an electric car in the driveway, and wind turbines on the hill would do unimaginable damage to the earth.