By Roderick Law (Townhall)
A suspect and counterproductive Interior Department policy is gone at last.
President Biden was no Pharaoh, but he did order bricks without straw. As part of his “Net Zero” climate agenda, he wanted 50 percent of new vehicle sales in the U.S. to be electric cars by 2030. Yet electric car batteries require rare earth metals, and his Department of the Interior (DOI) canceled mining leases for exactly those metals, supposedly because they were in a wilderness area. Consequently, American manufacturers would be dependent on critical minerals from China.
Now, Congress has finally ended the schizophrenic policy, passing a Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn the Biden DOI’s ban on mining in northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. With the President’s signature a few days ago, the Biden administration’s ill-advised rule is gone, and DOI is restricted from taking similar actions in the future.