Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 241: A Half Life of Never

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Ep. 241: A Half Life of Never · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: predict anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the
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  Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: you stand with on X everybody. I don't want to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: discourage you from listening to this episode. It's about Pebble
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Mind in Alaska, and everything you're gonna hear is pertinent
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and relevant. But here's here's the weird thing. While we
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: were recording this episode with Tim Bristol about Pebble Mind
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: in Bristol Bay, Alaska, a big news story broke. In
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: this eisode you're gonna hear mention of a guy named
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Tim Collier who works on behalf of Pebble Mind. While
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: we were recording the show, it came out that Tim Collier,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: who served as CEO role on the Pebble Mind project,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: was secretly recorded saying some things that are speculated about
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: in this coming episode. This will make more sense after
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you listen. For instance, he acknowledges to some people who
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: are posing as potential investors to the Mind we're going
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: to be discussing today. He acknowledges not that this would
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: be a twenty year project, but this that phase one
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of this project would be a one year project. And
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: he discusses certain politicians by name who he says, sure
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: they'll pay lip service, two opponents of the mind, and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: they'll act like they care about having this mind on right.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, I'm friends with him,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I know him, and they'll just rubber stamp the thing.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: That's an essence I'm I'm paraphrasing them, that's an essence
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of what this guy says on these secretly recorded tapes.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: And Tim Collier, who were going to discuss quite a
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: bit in this show, had to promptly resign. So understand
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: that this episode happened in the minutes before this major
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: twist in the story occurred. So dig in and you
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: will walk away borderline expert on pebble Mind, and hopefully,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: like me, you'll come to the decision that this is
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the wrong mind in the wrong place and we need
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to fix this problem once and for all. All Right,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: we're joined by uh super special guests out of Homer Laste,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Tim Bristol, how predictable? Is it that I bring up that?
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: You know? You know what I'm gonna bring up? Look
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: about your name? How that work out? Either chance or faith?
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: You know, take your pick. So what I'm getting at here?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: His name is Tim Bristol. Yeah, you've dedicated how many
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: years to fighting pebble mine on Bristol Bay? Did you
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: change your name to Bristol? Did not know it's born
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: with that name? At what point where you like, wow, huh,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: you know my name is the name of that place.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: I think the best thing about it was when I
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: started going out to these communities, these native villages. You
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: know a lot of us white people all the same,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of got out there in baseball hats
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and right and garret and you know I have some
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, scruffy scruffy beard, and they remembered
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: me because they're like Tim Bristol, we remember your last name.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: It's so good. It's great. So I worked out, you know,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: it worked out really well. It was that vantageous. Yes,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: can you uh man like, explain to people as though
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: they're five years old, Yeah, as twenty years old. Explain
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: to people like they're twenty years old. What when someone
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: says pebble mind. Okay, what is pebble mind? Considering that
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: it's at this point it's nothing, But what are we
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: talking about when we talk about Pebble mine. Pebble Mine
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: is a proposal to build either the second largest or
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the largest open pit golden copper mine in the world
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: at the headwaters of the most productive wild salmon fishery
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: left on the planet. And it's a choice for Alaska.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: You know, we're we're at a crossroads. We got to
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: decide whether we're going to allow everything everywhere where? Are
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: we just going to say some places are just too
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: important for renewable resources, for thousands of American jobs, for
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: America's you know, natural heritage, and we're not going to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: allow this to go forward. The superlative largest or second largest.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: What does that hinge on? Well, it's all about the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: habitat when you're talking about Sakai salmon production, right, So
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about the mind size like it would be
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the largest, Like I mean, there's there's varying proposals or
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: like it's unclear how to measure them. Well that there's
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: there's This is where it gets really confusing for the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: public and incredibly irritating for us that are trying to
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you know, punch through and tell the truth on this thing.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: It is the largest known gold resource and the second
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: largest known copper resource in North America. And when the
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: head of the company Pebble Limited Partnership, this guy named
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Ron Theson, goes and talks to investors at you know
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: World Gold Form and things like that, he talks in
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: those terms, those superlatives, that this is a you know,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: world class resource that we may be able to mind
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: it for a hundred years or more. But then when
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Pebble comes back to the public, when Pebble gives a
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers, they say, oh,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be there for twenty years and then we're
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: gonna go away. And you know, there's really no way
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: to sugarcoat it. It's a flat outline, and the government
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: right now is swallowing it, hook line and sinker. It
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: makes it incredibly frustrating because I just you know, if
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: you talk to people that don't have a that don't
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: have skin in the game, that are experts in the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: mining world, they'll tell you that they're not going to
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: make any money in the first twenty years, and there's
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: no way they're going to stop after twenty years. The
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: shareholders wouldn't let them. Everybody was part of the company
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: would get sued, and they would just put a whole
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: new set of leadership in there and then apply for
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: a little additional permit and just keep going. Would it
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: somehow make it better if they did stop after twenty years? Yeah?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Would that? Would that ease your mind? Not really now?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And the other damage will be done as far as
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: like the all the infrastructure and the what it takes
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: to open the mind, right, Yeah, yeah, I I would.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I would point I would try to find you know
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a place in the world where that's happened. Right, we
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: spend billions on infrastructure, roads, a port, uh, getting a
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: natural gas pipeline out there, and and then just quitting
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: after twenty years, right when you you may have not
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: turned to profit by that point, So I just you
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: know that's not going to happen. And then you have
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other mineral claims staked around the
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Pebble Prospect. The thing that people don't realize is you're
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: looking at a thousand square miles and mining claims at
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the headwaters of Bristol Bay, and that would make it
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: one of the largest mining districts, if not the largest
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: mining district in the world. And you start thinking about
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: the implications for wild salmon production, and you look at
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: wild salmon runs all the all throughout the Pacific rim
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and you pretty much know all the story is gonna end.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You know, have you ever heard this? That all of
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the gold that's ever that's in existence above ground, So
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: all of the gold that's ever been hauled out of
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the earth since the Egyptians, there's only enough to fill
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: three Olympic sized swimming pools all of that gold, Forbes estimate.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Forbes estimates that that it's would take that all the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: gold since two thousand BC, including the Egyptians, that all
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of that gold would fill three point to seven Olympic
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: swimming pools. That's what's ever been dragged out of the earth.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Isn't that one die hard movie they had? Do you
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: think pools? Swimming pools? Note joke though either Yeah, it's
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of volume. The Okay, put your mining engineer
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: head on for a minute about have one of those.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: But I'll try, Okay, I mean, shooting engineers are smart people.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We should have brought one like explained because it's the process, right,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: part of what pisses people off about Pebble minds Like
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: it's not like you're it's not like a bunch of
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: old dudes dressed up like hatch Jack out there with
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: gold pans pulland nuggets. Yeah, like explain leech you know,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: cyanide leech mining. Yeah, so you know with Pebble, to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: get back to the speaking to the twenty year old,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: it's size type location, right, it's the it's the size
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: of the mind. We we've already talked about that. It
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: would be one of the biggest excavations in the history
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of mankind really when you include the pit and the infrastructure.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: So Pebble Pebble, if if to go to full build out,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: would use more energy on a daily basis in the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: city of Anchorage. And you've been through there a bunch
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of times. It's not a small town. It's two sixty
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: people that would suck up that amount of electricity, Yeah,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and use fuel and water, use more than twice as
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: much water that is used by a city a two
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: d sixty people on a daily basis. And you know,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever flown over the mindset area.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: There's nothing there. I mean, it's just it's just wilderness. Yeah,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: it's it's an amazing spot. And it drains two ways
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: towards two river systems, up towards the New Segak Malchatna
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and then down down towards Lake Ilyamna and the the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Quejack River. And those are the two major drivers of
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the of the salmon fishery that I think we'll probably
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: talk about a little bit. But so from an engineering standpoint,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: you're talking something, you know, the biggest development project in
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Alaska since they discovered oil in the North Slope and
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: built the Trans Alaska pipeline, and you know dead Horse
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and Prude Obey and all that kind of stuff. And
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: then uh so, yes, size, and then you have the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: type of mind So there's a lot of gold and
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: copper in the ground, but it's not a very rich
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: or body. Um. It sits in a in a big
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: sulfide deposit. And you're basically so a friend, a friend
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: of virus who has worked for a long time with us,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: who has some background in mining, and he used to
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: be the state Senate president. Guy named Rick Alford, lifelong Republican,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: UM Big Game Guide retired Big Game Guide. He uh,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: he calls it a sulfur mine with a golden copper component.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: You have to get through a whole bunch of waste
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: rock to get to the gold and the copper. And
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: then the big problem, the engineering problem, the one that's
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: chased away Anglo American and Rio Tinto and Mitsubishi and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Quantum Mineral, some of the heavy hitters has been what
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the hell are they going to do with all that waste?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Because you have those are other mining companies, and those
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: are like the contractors. There's like the developer and then
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: the contractor. There's the analogy. Now there's a developer, the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: sort of the hype machine, which is Pebble Limited Partnership,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the Snake Oil salesman, if I may, and then there's
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the the majors who actually design and operate minds. And
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: we should get to the fact that that Pebble part
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: like the sort of brain, the sort of brains behind this.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I'd like to get to this because I don't understand
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: as well. They're having a hard time sort of finding
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the contractor right like they're like, Hey, here's this crazy
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: house we're gonna build, and contractors keep coming in and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: being like, yeah, that's not for us. So I like
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: that analogy. Yeah, so you get Anglo American, Rio, Tinto, Mitsubishi,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Quantum all walked away, Anglo walked away from a five
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: seventy million dollar investment. And I think it's you know,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: it really comes down to and what we've heard through
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the grapevine and lots of experts that have just kind
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of been around the proposal throughout the years and said,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: we just don't know how you're going to manage that
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: kind of waste over time. It would be like like
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: a Berkeley pit, beyond comprehension. I think that's another piece
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: from the twenty year old standpoint that needs to explained.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: When you're talking about that waste, about that sulfur, what
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: what are we talking about specifically in terms of contained
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and the potential for if it gets out? Are we
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: being condescending to two year olds? But I mean actually
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: actually we are because my coworkers she's twenty two, and
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: she's way smarter than me, so way smarter as though
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: talking to a forty six year old. Um, yeah, I
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: want to get it, Like why okay, let me just
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: show us out real quick. We have the thing nearby
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: to where we're sitting right now. I don't have to
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: drive from here called Berkeley Pit, And at a time
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: was the like golden copper mine. It's in Butte, Montana.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: You always I don't know what this means. You always
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: here thrown out that like once upon time Beau had
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: per capita more millionaires than anywhere in the country. But
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I was thinking too, if you had a community of
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: a hundred people and there happened to be a millionaire there,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: you would have more millionaires per capita. So I don't
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: really that people like to throw that out there. Um,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: there's a great history of Butte in the Berkeley Pit.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: It's just an article. There's all these books, but there's
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: an article called Pennies from Hell, and it gets into
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: like what exactly happened there, and they tunnel mind it right,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: just like pulling out chunks. But over time technology is improved,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the quality of the ore decrease in different areas, and
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: they eventually got to this thing where they pull the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: ship out of the ground and the ore contains what
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you're after, copper and gold, silver, and you leach it
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: out by you pour acid on it, cyanide, you pull
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: it up, crush it up, dump a bunch of cyanide
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: on it, and then it it dissolves, correct, and there's
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: some way that you then harvest it, but then you
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: wind up with all of this contaminated liquid that then
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: has the gold live in a lake. And Berkeley Pit
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: is a problem that will never go away. It's an
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: enorm Once a hundred snow geese once landed there and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: died on the water in that pit, and it'll be
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: a problem into you know, I don't want to over
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: conflate work pit with this, but I do want to
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: talk like, like what what they mean when they say
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: because I think people think of mining and think you're
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: gonna dig a hole and also all these goals starts
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: flying out of the hole and then you load it
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: on airplanes and fly it somewhere. Yeah, they're talking ten
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: billion tons of waste associated with full build out of
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: pebble um. A percentage of that would be highly reactive
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: sulfide bearing rock. And when that sulfide bearing rock is
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: exposed to air and water, it creates the loot sulfuric acid,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: which has a half life of never. It just has
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: to sit and a pit and be treated in perpetuity.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: That's the part I didn't get. So that so it's
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: like it's something that when you pull it up and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: allow it to oxidize or expose the water, then it
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: creates the problem. And you put that ship into a
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: lake that's right, and build a damn to keep it
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: from going anywhere on Earth and dam in an area
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: that's one of the more seismically active places in the world.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: You know, it's on the Pacific rim of Fire. They
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: had an earthquake out there last year that really shook
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: our house. Um, it was high sevens. So you know
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: when they talk about, oh we got damns designing, nothing
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: can ever go wrong. But you're seeing more and more
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: of that of these these modern minds. You know that
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: they have such huge amounts of waste that they have
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: to contain that it becomes a real problem. And Pebble makes,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: you know, Berkeley Pitt look like you know, just a
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: just a dot. It's way bigger. You know, you just
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: mentioned a seven uh earthquake in the sevens. I was
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: just reading this book about the what year did the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: big earthquake hit the Anchorage? I read a book about
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the John Muellen who's been on the show, just wrote
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: a book called This is Chance and it's about the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: sixty four earthquake and Anchorage. And Richter at the time
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: was just developing his scale, and it's an exponential scale,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: so a seven is ten times worse than the six.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: He he was a nudist. Richter, he was down in California,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: um listening to any he'd built the rick, he'd built
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the seismic graph that he installed in his living room
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and drove his wife crazy, this giant seismograph. And he
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: was working on his scale, and he was sitting in
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: his living room listening to a concert with his wife.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Won the sixty four earthquake hit in Alaska, and he
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: looked over at his seismograph and said that was a
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: big one and low and behole, the biggest earthquake to
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: ever strike the continent. Yeah, it could happen again. You
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: know that's not that long ago. No, no, no, A
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: lot of these people are still around swallowed streets, right,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: sixty ft tsunami hit Kodiak. Yeah. Yeah. When people point
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: out the seismic part of the area, I think people
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: are like, oh, you're just being alarms. But I mean
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: it's like it's an actual thing, man, Right, I think
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: you know, we have a tough time grasping these time frames, right.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, the the asset mind waste doesn't go away,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: someone's gonna have to store it, and you know, companies
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: rise and fall, and someone's gonna have to pay for
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: all that monitoring. If you were to, you know, take
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: all these steps and actually build the thing and over time,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: you never know who's going to get stuck with the bill,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Probably the people of Alaska, the people of the United States.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Explain a little bit about what's to be what's to
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: be lost, Like besides this the actual destruction or you
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: can take it both ways, the actual destruction of the footprint, okay,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: which is not insignificant, but I think that that is
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: something that people probably would become comfortable with maybe Like Okay,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: there's this there's this like part of the earth that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: will cease to function as it now. It will like
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: not be wild byfe habitat anymore, it'll be the opposite.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: But then there's this sort of like ticking time bomb element,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: right that all this ship would just downstream, Like what's
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: that look like? Like, like what is the resource that
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: would be the resource resources that could be compromised if
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the worst in the worst case scenario, and when I
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: want to know too, if in the best case scenario,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: are there still compromises to the wildlife habitat. Yes. So
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the third part size, type and then location. So the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Pebble prospect sits in the saddle between the two largest
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: salmon producing watersheds in Bristol Bay, which makes them two
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: of the biggest salmon producing watersheds in the world. Because
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the Bristol Bay being the biggest salmon run, it's it's
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the biggest SOCCI salmon run in the world. It's probably
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: gonna be closest in the world's global SOCCAI salmon supply
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: this year because you shippn't me really. Yeah, So the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: total run this year was fifty seven million fish and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the commercial fleet harvested about forty million ski go on
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: hit me with that again. Fifty seven million was a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: total run and the harvest was forty million, And you
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: know that's amazing that you can harvest that level and
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: still get the return. Salmon are incredible if you take
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: care of habitat and you're really on it management wise,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: you know, fishing game can turn the run on and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: off like a like a faucet. You know, they can
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: they can take you know, hardcore gill netters and say
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: you're done for the day and they all stop. Can
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: imagine you did that kind of trim off on a
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: deer population, Dude, did you take decades to recover? Yeah?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: They're incredible. Um. So it's that location sitting in the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: saddle between the two rivers and you know up to
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the that's them coming in. Yeah, that's the fish coming in. Yeah,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: that's the return and that's seventeen million then cranks out
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: enough returners to pull another forty million fish out in
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the future for human consumption. Yeah, we're probably at peak
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: abundance right now. Bristol Bay probably has more salmon coming
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: back now than it ever has because they can go
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: down in the bottom of these lakes and do these samples,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: you know, these of just where the layers of decayed
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: matter have settled in the bottom of the settim of
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: these lakes over time and kind of reconstruct runs from
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a hundred two hundred years ago, and they think, I
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: think the researchers think that we're probably having productivity that
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: is as strong or exceeds what you had before. Four
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: white people showed up so successful just because the habitats
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: in great shape. It's the theory overwhelmingly about super high
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: quality habitat that hasn't been disturbed. And then you know,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty solid management by Alaska fishing game. So so yeah,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: so that's that's so even if even if the mind
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: never had something go wrong, Um, you're still gonna have
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a destruction of wetlands. You're gonna have the elimination of
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: you know, several dozen miles of salmon stream. And then
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Pebble will point out, well, that's the only like one
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: small percentage of the overall you know, the area of
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: productive salmon habitat in the region. What's the problem. Then
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: you have to start looking at what happens if something
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: does go wrong, if there's a catastrophic tailing dam failure.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Let's visit that. Let's visit Yah's question for a minute.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: So best case scenario, as you lose several dozen miles
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: of salmon stream. Yeah, it's it's more than that. That
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: gets into weather. They're gonna operate for twenty years, they're
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: gonna operate for a hundred. Right. That gets back to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the thing that drives us crazy. Where it's there's a
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: bait and switch going on right now. That's all there
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: is to it. So if you read full build out,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: you you destroy hundreds of miles of salmon stream and
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: you'd have this huge excavation. And then you got to
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: remember the pit serves as a sump, so all the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: water in around there that's charging all these these systems
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: that have these very complex um interchanges of surface and
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: subsurface water, it all just sucks towards the pit that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: will be holding the the tailings. So how big is
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the pit we don't know as of yet because we
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: don't know what the you know, the proposal that's going
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: to possibly get approved by them federal government is. But
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: it would be one thousand seventy ft deep and one
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: thousand seventy ft deep, and it's gonna be a good
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: episode of Deep Drop Boys. And then i'd have to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: you know, I can't remember exactly how many miles by
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: how many miles, but we're talking miles. I've kind of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: lost some of this stuff. You couldn't drink no no
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: like no amount a like stry pen. No huh, let's
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: let's let's cover off our worst case. Yeah, So we
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: hired an expert to look at what would happen if
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you had a tailing stam failure, because the Army Corps
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: of Engineers did not require Pebble to do that during
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: the e I S process, which seems that doesn't seem
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to be looking at all them things that could or
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: could not happen, right, Um, So we hired an expert
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and he showed, if you know a tailing dam, let go,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: you would have waste that would reach Bristol Bay. So
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the Pebble prospect is a long way from Bristol Bay.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: It's about hundred miles up river and up the watershed.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: It's enormous watershed. It's like the size of Wisconsin, you know.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: So and you know, he just he said, based on
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: what I know and what I've seen in other places,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: you would have mine waste that would reach all the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: way to the Pacific Ocean. The Bristol Bay itself salt
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: wire and would essentially wipe out the whole system for
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: a period of years. And we started going to the
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: public with this presentation, We're going to the commercial fishing
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: fleet because you know, you have to have the commercial
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: fishing fleet on your side out there if you're going
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: to if you could actually make up a difference politically
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and start to do a presentation for all these all
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: these guys before the and women. A matter of fact,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: one of my co workers is a commercial fishing boat captain.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: So Um and Pebble hated the information so much that
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: they suit us. So there's there's a bunch of details there,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: but yeah, they just wanted to kind of squelch public debate.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: They didn't want anybody covering this part of the issue
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: because you know, it's really problematic. They didn't want to
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: talk about the failure, right, they don't want and then
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: they want us talk about it either, so because it'll
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: just sit there for thousands and thousands of years fine
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: or un earthing tailings damn collapses, you know that happened,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and there they're arguing, would be like, no, it will
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: just always be there, but it will always be fine.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And then you know the evidence is starting
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: to really come in. Right, So you had that catastrophe
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: down in Brazil a couple of years ago, where and
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: that was a modern mind run by a modern company,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: you know, a well capitalized company that really knew what
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: they were doing, and tailing dam let go went to
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: destroy the river and killed people. And then you had
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the case of the mom Polly um mine in British Columbian,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a tributary of the Fraser, which is a sacay salmon
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: producer in British Columbia, and they had a catastrophic tailings
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: damn failure, and you know it's just it's a mess.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Or five years later in productivity at question the lake
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: which the waste went out into his way down, and
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: you know, these things can fail. In the recent years,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I've read about mass fish die offs from things ranging
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: from a farmer putting a bunch of hog ship in
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: a pile next to a trout stream, bourbon spilling out
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: of a distillery during a fire, milk killing miles of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: fish out of a river. It's like, these things happen
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: all the time, and we're talking about things that most
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: of them sitting like regards like fairly benign milk. Yeah
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: you can, you can those things versus sulfuric acid. Yeah,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I know. It's like it's like it's like, what's the
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: big deal. It's like, well, i'll tell you the big deal.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Ten miles of fish are dead. And when we're talking
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: about where this is right, like going towards Alamna. And
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: this is one thing just having guided in that area
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: for years, primarily as as a trout guy, but also
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: for salmon, that is one of there's a reason why
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: people spend tens of thousands of dollars to go there
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: just fish for a week or two there. I don't
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: know of a trout fishery like that Iliamna system that
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: produces just massive, massive, super healthy rainbows and all based
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: on the salmon bringing the energy back up through that.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Everything about that, everything about that whole area, flora, fauna,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: everything is based on the nutrient return from the salmon
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: coming from the ocean and dragging a hundred some odd
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: miles upstream. None of that stuff would exist without that
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: nutrient return. And so if you're if you're talking about
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: losing this particular place, and and you know when I
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: was up there, I have to admit I hated sak guiding.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Sak guiding is probably the most boring type of fishing
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: you could imagine. But so there's like the two levels
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: of of of reasons why I opposed this. One is
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the super personal level, which is that I love the
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: place and I love those trout, probably as much as
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: any fish I've ever fished for. But then the bigger
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: picture of what the saki represent to the economy into
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the whole area, Like I may not have wanted to
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: fish for impersonally, but what they do for Alaska and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: what they do for the planet is massive, and to
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: lose all that, it's just it's it's not the same
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: as like your backyard creek. Not to say you shouldn't
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: love your background backyard creek, but lake only I'm in
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: that whole system and then gat those places are incredible. Yeah,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Miles brings up a good point that people need to
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: think about. And you talk about Sam and is that
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: um Well, first off, so when sok I gets born,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: walk me through this to him, like a ski gets hatched,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: he goes down and spend that they dropped down to
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: a lake. Correct, They usually spawn an inlet inlet streams
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: coming into lakes. But there's all these different genetic subgroups
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: out in Bristol Bay. This this really diverse portfolio of
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: different salmon stocks. So it's really amazing at beach spawners
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: and you have some lake spawners, but usually it's a
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a smaller stream coming into a big lake,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and then those juveniles hang out for how long in
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: that couple of years year, a year, two years, and
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: they're roughly how big when they finally go and hit
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the hill like a finger right, and then there how
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: big when they come back, probably averaging around five six
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: seven pounds. So when when Miles mentions this, like this
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: sort of like exchange, you have an area where you
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: have an extraordinarily rich marine environment in a somewhat sterile
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: land environment and just in terms of like in terms
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: of biodiversity, like it's it's stunning in the marine environment
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: and and stunning but like limited in the land environment,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: meaning you don't have like you have like a great
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: wealth of like large land mammals that are very inspiring
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and stuff. But when you get down like just like
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the species count relative to the marine environment, it's kind
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: of low. So if you have fifty seven million sacks
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: that are gonna go up this river, and even if
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: humans then consume forty million of them, seventeen million five
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: to six pound fish basically transport marine resource back up
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: and to feed the land, millions and millions of pounds
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: of like carbon based life go up and it gets
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: eaten by everything and shout out by everything everywhere and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: decomposes and feeds the plants, feeds the fish, feeds the bears,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the birds. It's like that's where it's kind of like
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: life comes from, right from catisflies to brown bears. So
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: if you want to, like you talk, if you talk
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: about oh yeah, so the salmon are gone. You know.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: My kids always like to ask, like, why do we
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: have mosquitoes? Oh my, I don't know, man, but I
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: bet you in a weird way if we didn't things
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: that go to ship, you know, and you remove that,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: it's like you're removing more than It's not like, oh,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: forty million people have to find a different thing for supper.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: This is different than that. Yeah. I mean they've even
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: done studies in British Columbia now where where you know,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the salmon runs have been greatly diminished and the the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: ecosystem is just not the same. There isn't as much wildlife,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: there aren't as many insects. I mean, these these systems
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: are just completely dependent on salmon. There wouldn't be anything
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: in these rivers really, maybe some growling, some small grawling, right,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: but you wouldn't have you wouldn't have the rainbow trout either,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: which we haven't talked about. You wouldn't have this incredibly huge,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: vicious rainbow trout fishery either. You know, everything's just keyed
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: in on on the salmon lifecycle. My boy, Jimmy, I
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: went to my first pebble mine event when he was
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: an infant. He's ten years old, but he was a baby.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: He's now ten. It was an event in New York
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and it was being put on by It was partially
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: being put on by Tiffany's, the jewelry company, and Tiffany
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: was was saying and even at that time, Uh, sure
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: we sell all kinds of golden ship, but we're making
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a promise that we will not carry these people's gold.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: How could Why were we talking about it ten years
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: ago and we're still talking about it now? Like what
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: was happening then? Like how did it even come up
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: to something like what I'm not asking very clear question.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Let's start with this question. When did someone first say,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: holy ship, we should mind some gold out there on
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Tholds Rivers, probably probably twenty years ago. And the pe
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the name pebble comes from a geologist flew over the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: mind site and it reminded him of the Pebble Beach
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: golf course. So because all the water holes. You know,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: So the history is really is that really what it
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: goes from? Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that. It's like
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: sometimes the names you think, na, yeah, yeah, the history
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: is a little bit like to smack that guy in
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the it looks like golf course. That the opposite of
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: a golf course. But the history is a little bit tragic. Right.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So you had all these lands that were set aside
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and there
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: were all these lands that we all from selection and
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: then they whittled it down, explain that I never heard
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of that you never heard of in oh yeah, so
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Anoka and there was a there was a huge selection pool.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: And then I got win that was that was around
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: like the Native Claim Settlement Act, and there was a
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Settlement Act and then they decided something needs to be
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: done to set aside a bunch of Alaska's lands for
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the National Interest for created Wrangle SA National Park. I
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: didn't know that that was. I didn't know that that
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: that that component of that era had a name. Yeah.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: So I added a hundred million acres to the conservation
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: system in the United States so it's unbelieved all now
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: as part of this is elaborate deal brokered around, like
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: what we're gonna do with this new state, and then
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: how we're gonna get away from the reservation system that
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: we used in the US, and how we're gonna settle
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: with natives. That was the first piece of legislation. Then
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: there was sort of lands conservation legislation, and there were
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: more lands that were part of the selection pool that
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: ended up in passing in the legislation, and one piece
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: was called the Ilianda Game Refuge, and it's the area
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that now includes a Pebble Prospect. And if you look
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: at the rest of the land use patterns, management panterns
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: out there, they're all set aside for salmon production and conservation.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Right you got Lake Clark National Park, you have cat
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: My National Park, and then you have the biggest state
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: park in the United States, would tick Chick. That's two
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: million acre state park, and all of them have huge
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: salmon production, all these you know, low gradient streams and
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: these big lakes that are really productive. And then this
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Alianda Game Refuge would have been the last piece of
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the wild salmon puzzled right out there. You would have
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: the great salmon production zone in the world, and it
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: would all be safeguarded and perpetuity, And I mean, I
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: think that's something to be really proud of as an
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: American citizen. And you know, the state actually managed that
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: area for a long time for fishing game, mostly for
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: salmon production, but also for cariboo. There's some mild Chatton
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: heard out there and and moose and and the two
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: thousand five we had a governor and a chief of
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: staff who decided that they wanted to take Alaska in
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: a different direction. There had been all these rumors that
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: there was a huge golden copper deposit out there. There
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: was all this breathless talk of one of the world's
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: great claims. And they took a management plan that was
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: based on you know, renewable resources and have been deeply
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: vetted with the local people out there, and they almost
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: overnight turned it into this area that was going to
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: be open in mineral claim staking. And that's when you
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: start to see, you know, big mining companies and junior
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: mining companies all start to take a hard look at
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: you know, can we make a ton of money out here?
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: And we've been fighting it ever since. So you know,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: I I was working for Trout Unlimited and we were
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: working on some watershed restoration projects and some forest conservation
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: work in Southeast Alaska and Pacific's Amon Treaty. And I
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: got a call from this lodge owner guy named Brian Kraft,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: who has uh two lodges out there, and he said, hey,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: you're the You're the Trout Sky and I'm like, yeah,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: because I gotta I got an issue for you, and
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: that the rest has been history. That's that was seriously. Yeah,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: it's been two thousand five. And he had to uh
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: two uh guys at his lodge from Newmont Cold and
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: he showed them the preliminary um propaganda from from Pebble
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: and Brian was like, hey, there's gonna be more people
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: out here. You know, it'll be good for my lodge,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: you know, would be more customers. And these new Mont guys,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: there are two experts that were getting close to retirement.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: They said, flies over the mindset, and so he did.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And they came back and they looked at what was
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: proposed and they said, you can't let this happen. There's
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: so much water here, there's so much habitat that's going
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to be destroyed. There's no way you can do that
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: us and have it be successful, you know with you know,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: from a from a balance standpoint, yeah you could, you
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: could do it, but you're going to destroy this place
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: if you allowed to happen. And that put the fear
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: of God and Brian, and Brian started calling me. And
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I've been lucky enough to have a whole bunch of
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: great people I've worked with throughout the years. And you know,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: we spent a lot of time out in the region
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: with the people who live there who hate the idea
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: of the mind at a tune up about opposition. So
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: it's been it's been a long grind. We're still in it.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Get back to your question from a long time ago.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: We're still in it because of politics, right, the pendulum
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: keeps swinging back and forth as to what we're gonna
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: do with her with our you know, best wild places,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and here we are. You mentioned the locals there, it's
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: predominly Native Alaska, Alaska Native and what's that? What's their
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: take off? I mean, just for full clarity here, we
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: had arranged to have a colleague a year, a Native
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Alaskan colleague years come down. But just because of the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: landscape with COVID and everything. She wasn't able to come down.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: But what's um, what's what has been that communities and
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: in the history of the things its two thousand five,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: what has been that community's just asking you to step
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: in and articulative, you know, as much as you're comfortable
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: articulating their viewpoint on it. Uh. What has been that
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: community's response to this? Yeah, I mean they've led the
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: effort from the beginning. You know, even before Brian called me.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of local people, some of the
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: elders out there, Uh, and so some of the younger
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: people that just said, this is we don't want this,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: you know, this is this goes contrary to everything we
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: believe in and everything that we've you know, our entire culture. Um.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: So there's been a bunch of polling done by the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Regional Native Corporation out there, and about eight of their
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: shareholders opposed development of the mind and that's pretty exceptional Alaska.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Used Really, the closer you get to a development project,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: the more support you have for it. You know, it's
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: still a rural place. We're still heavily dependent on natural
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: resource development for for incommon you know, wealth and paying
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: for state government and the locals hate the idea, and
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: they've been the leaders since the beginning. You know. I
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: think one of the things that's been unique is we
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: showed up. We had a lot of ideas and a
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: lot of opinions as to how a campaign should work,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and we realized pretty quickly that we needed to go
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: to these communities. We needed to go um talk to
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: locals and kind of let them display leadership. And I
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: think that's why we've been so successful of holding back
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: mind development for so long. You know, you're talking one
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: of the richest golden copper deposits in the world, and
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: you've had politics that, to a certain degree, have been
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in favor of doing that that kind of stuff, but
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: having that local opposition has just been amazing. Yeah, it's
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: too bad. It's too bad. Alana her you who couldn't
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: come down and join us. She's been she's been working
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: on Pebble or entire adult life. She started working on
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: when she was in Hoist, before she was like grade school. So,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and that's coming from the perspective of someone whose family
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: and community members live a subsistence lifestyle. Yeah, it's kind
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: of a based on the resource. Yeah, it's kind of
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: a blend out there. You know, you have you have
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of Alaska Natives who are commercial fishermen as well.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: So they the gill Net and Trout unlimiteds had this
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: amazing program for the last ten years now where they're
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: trying to build up a stable of of local guides,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: getting more Alaska Native kids from the region to become
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: sport fishing guides. And the regional Native corporation out there,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Bristol Bay Native Corporation just bought one of the big
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: lodge concessions and they run three lodges. Now, They've got
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: capt my Land and they have they have a mission lodge,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: and they're trying to get more their their people working
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: at the lodgest. So I think, you know, I think
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: you're going to see more local ownership and operation of
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: the sport fishing industry as well. Yeah, so, which is good.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I mean in terms of like the diversified revenue, you
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: know what, what has been some of the I think
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: there's like an issue fatigue that takes place. Yeah, with
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: pebble about it, because like I was saying, I haven't
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: mapped every twist and turn, but um, I'm be here
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: about this thing all the time. And I've been alarmed
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: about it and concerned about it all along, and we're always,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: you know, off of being invited to talk about it,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: and it's always like, this is the turning point. But
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: it was a turning point a decade ago. Like why
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: why are there so many? You know, I remember the thing,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: you know, remember Paul Wolf, what's remember someone saying like
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: you could put a wooden steak in Paul Wolf, what's
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: his heart? And he would turn up in the next
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: administration being like, uh, why is it that it won't
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: go away? But it always seems like this is the
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: turning point. How many turning points are there? Or like,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: tell me about some turning I mean I don't know.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I stopped trying to politics. You
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict it anymore, right, So big turning points? Give
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: me a turning point from a decade? So when when? When?
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: So when Rio Tinto and Anglo American, two of the
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: largest mining companies in the world, decided to walk away
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: from the pebble prospect that was huge And honestly, I
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: wish you would have had a little bigger party. You know,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: we kind of we knew that the saga wasn't over.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: But to see two of the major mining companies in
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the world walk away from a you know, half a
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: billion dollar investment, that was really significant. I don't for
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: those of us that were just kind of working day
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: in and day out, I think we we didn't really
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: totally understand the significance of that, right, I mean, you know,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And what did they publicly say, and what is the
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: rumor mill about why they walked publicly? I think they
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: said that they were it was during you know, they
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: were coming we were coming up on the on the
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: big you know, global economic downturn, and they just decided
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: to focus their their work on on minds that were
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: closer to operation, closer to coming to fruition. You know,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: you need to still knew they had a big permitting
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: process and huge infrastructure costs. They were like, we're gonna
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: we're gonna shrink a little bit here and focus on
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: a few other prospects in other places around the world. Um.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: That's what they said publicly, And then we heard internally
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: that there was a there's a real tug of war
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: between the two companies that you know, one wanted to
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: try to do it in a way that wouldn't have
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: the huge negative impacts that we've been talking about, and
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the other one said, there's no way you can make
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: any money doing that because the or grade, the or
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: body is a low grade and you need a massive
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: excavation to get to the point where you're gonna make
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: any money. So that tug of war, you know, they
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: just they walked away, and then UM then first Quantum
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: was the next big operator that came in, and they
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: walked away. And those are really significant events. UM. The
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: other really big significant event was when at the talent
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: of the Obama administration, they used Clean Water Act Authority
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: to say, UM, essentially that we're not going to grant
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: you the Dredge and phil permit, the four Old four permit, UM,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: because we have looked at the proposed mind and it's
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: going to have negative, serious negative impacts on wetlands and
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: waterways of the United States. And we got really close
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: to uh to it a victory, I think. UM. Through
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: that process, it was in the you know, it went
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: into the courts. Probable challenged it in the courts, and
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: it kind of languished in the courts for a couple
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: of years, and then UM, the Trump administration came in
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and they settled the outstanding lawsuits with Pebble Limited Partnership
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to the favor of Pebble Limited Partnership and started kind
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of restarted the permanent clock again. So that's where we're at.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Who who actually owns the land? Where the whose land is?
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Where the actual thing is gonna stay of Alaska, but
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: it becomes federal because there's just implications for all the stuff.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, because there's federal waters. So the Clean Water
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Act comes into play in the Army Corps of Engineers,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: is the Permittee of record? What is uh? What's the
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: state's general groove about this? The governor, the current governor,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: he's going home. He likes it. Yeah, what's you like
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: about it? I? You know, I think he sees it
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: as the next big thing, right you Now, we're we're
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: getting a lot less money for oil. There's less oil
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: going through the Alaska Pipeline. There's lots of people talking
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: about how we're gonna be using less oil in the future.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I believe that yet, but um so,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I think that the governor is looking for that next
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: big resource development play that's going to you know, fill
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: the Alaskan coffers again. Because we don't pay any state
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: income tax or any state sales tax, and we're heavily
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: dependent on oil revenue for all our budget. Yeah, you
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: also heavily. There's some interesting things about Alaska's economy that
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: I think people should understand is that, uh one, it's
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: a federal spending a little bit of a sink federal wise, yeah,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: meaning the federal government spends far more in Alaska then
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: they get in tax revenue. Yeah, way more. It's the
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: states that people love to hate. I think New Jersey
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: pays in better than any like, Like the Feds pull
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: more money out of New Jersey than they put in,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: and I think that's the strongest performing state. Alaska is
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: one of the weakest. Yeah yeah, yeah, I want to
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: change our license plate from last frontier to give me
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: my money and leave me alone. So then instead of
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: paying state taxes in Alaska, the state pays you. Right.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: So they have a thing called the Permanent Fund, and
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: they take the state has all these lucrative oil leases
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: on state land. Um, they generate so much money that
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: they cut you a check and this and the check
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: that you get caught as a citizen of Alaska and
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: your members of your household uh, isn't tied directly to
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the price of oil. It's tied to the health of
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the fund. But the health of the fund is definitely
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: influenced by the price of oil. So you could go
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: up there, Let's say you're particularly fecunned individual, you and
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: your wife could move up there and produce six kids
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: and make quite a tidy little sum. What was what
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: was the fund? What was the fun play? What did
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the fun pay last year? You know, it's only like
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: a thousand bucks last year, So it's actually, you know,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: we're coming to the end of the road of you know,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: but it's it's it highs. It's like three grand. Yeah,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: So you could go up there and have like two
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: people go up there, have six kids and pull twenty
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: four k just in uh. It's been known to happen
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: and for a year. Yeah, I got friends with you
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: with his blood money. I got one body who he
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: every year takes his check and puts it into his
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: kids college fund because he thinks he thinks it's blood money.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's actually a really cool concept. But it
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: gets to the fact that you know, oil is not
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: going to happen again. You know, the amount we get
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: per barrel produced is way higher than you get from minerals.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: It's like you know, on each on each barrel of oil,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and for minerals, our royalties regime is the same as
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: on federal lands. Right, it's like less than one return.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: So it's not gonna do what our governor done Levy
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: wants it to do. Yeah, let me, I forgot finish.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: The point about the economy there is that when oil
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: goes south, everything goes south, everything goes soun school education
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: goes so like university spending, public school spending. Like they
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: get hit man, and they're kind of living in a
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: separate like just because there's a something could happen in
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the lower forty eight like whatever, housing thing, whatever, like
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: different blips, they're living a different reality. Like their ship
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: is driven by a completely different set of factors. So
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: you could see, like if oil is going the way
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: you're saying, you can see that someone who's charged by
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: voters with looking at the long term financial prospects for
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: his state could be excused for thinking like we gotta
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: do something, yeah yeah, and we have other minds, you know,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and you don't you don't see the big, huge controversy
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: around some of these other minds, whether it's Fort Knox
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: or Red Dog, you know, some of the some of
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: the bigger operating minds in the United States. And it's
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: definitely a part of the economy. And we all, you know,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: use all these materials that are coming out of the
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: ground for you know, our modern lifestyle. So we're not
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: saying that this is an anti mining campaign, but size
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: type location again, and then you look at what's at stake,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: and you know, you have about ten thousand American jobs
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: that are depending on depending on that fishery. So you know,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: in a good year, this was not a good year
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: because of COVID, salmon prices were in the toilet, and
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the export market was non existent. But if
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: you know you're a good gillnet captain, in a good year,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: you can make a hundred thousand bucks in six weeks,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: and you have a whole the whole host of sport
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: fishing lodges out there that are charging upwards the twelve
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: grand a week, and you have guides and you have
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: pilots and all kinds of you know, different segments of
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: that economy are based on on that fishery and the
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: things renewable salmon prices were little this year. Yeah, they
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: were way down this yeah, attributed to COVID. Demand was down,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: you know. And then there was the trade stuff with China,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: because the Chinese buy a lot of Bristol based ok
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I know that that Chinese stuff is
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: messing with some of the logging projects. I think that
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: that point you bring up is one that I've dealt with,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: having written in the past a lot about mining issues
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: and pebble, among others, primarily for fishing focus publications. I've
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: I've definitely taken some scrutiny saying, well, you just anti
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: mining and and you know, to be fair to some
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: of those points, my interests lie in the fish, right.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: I don't make my living off of minds, but I don't.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: I try to be as I look at these issues
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: as as objective as I can be. And when you
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: talk about pebble mind you talk about some of the
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: other sulfide type minds. And as I learned more about
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: this in doing some of that reporting and understood like
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: the process by which these byproducts come about in these
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: minds and how toxic they can be, and when they're
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: located right next to a waterway, that I personally think
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: it's important. I think that you have to. I personally
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: think you should be drawing lines on well, this is
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: a place we shouldn't have this type of mind. And
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: this not to say we can't have sulified minds elsewhere
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: where there will still be risk, but it's not located
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: right next to a place that I really want to
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: go fishing and a lot of other people want to
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: make their living off of. I don't think it's bad
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: necessarily to come out and claim like your personal steak
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: on something. No, it's like it's better than the opposite,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: and it's better than you know, it's better than when
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: people um don't lay out they're they're sort of like
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: personal investment in an issue and act like they're just
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: acting like completely altruistically. That drives me not. I would
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: rather be like, I support these policies, and I'll be
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: frank with you, it's good for me financially, I like
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: I like it. I like it aesthetically, I like it
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: financially or whatever. So to be like, you know, I
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: just try to like clear up that all the time
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: by saying my view in terms of when I pursue
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: like my sort of like professional work and the media
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: products that I produced, and things like I try to
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: be that I won't belabor you with my opinions about
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: things that don't impact like the world of like sort
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: of like what's good for hunters and anglers? Right, And
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I think this is just really shitty for hunters and anglers.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: I think people minds like shitty for hunters and anglers.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: So I'll come out and say like where I'm coming
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: from on it, And I also just think it's I
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: also think that it's uh. I don't like the country
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: to make big mistakes where you confuse short term where
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: where like you pursue short term gain and and do
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: things that later we will sit and look like that
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: in a hundred years when we're being analyzed by that generation,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: that it will be like what idiots. Yeah, well, I
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: mean we talk about a sulfide mind much smaller, but
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: some of this in the third episode of Dots Boat, right,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: and and it's the same principle, and it's about deciding
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: like this particular kind of mind right next to this
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: watershed could be problematic for those of us who really
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: these fish and maybe depend on them. I do think though,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: like when again going back to the writing that I
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: was doing. I felt like I had a responsibility not
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: just to be honest about my inclinations, but also to say, like,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think I'm just anti mining. I'm not. I
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: don't have this pie in the sky vision where we
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: can survive in modern society without mining for minerals. It's
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: just deciding which places we can do that and then
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: figuring out how to price them accordingly. Yeah, that's good,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: that's a good point. And so that's gonna cost you more.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: It's gonna cost you more if we if we mind
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: less of it, things are going to be more expensive.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: And and I recognize that that that is a sacrifice
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: that I am able to make, him willing to make,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: and other people don't agree on. But to me, losing
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: these fisheries it just isn't worth it. Can we get
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: a new minute? Like who who are these dudes? Like?
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Who are the constant dudes here? I know that we
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: have sort of the big mining companies that actually like
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: come in and that coming and like do the work right?
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: They come in and do the work, They got the capital.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Like who who's the constant presence through this idea? Uh,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Northern dynasty minerals they're out of Vancouver, and the Pebble
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Limited Partnership is the subsidiary from from Northern Dynasty. And
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: what's their story. They're they're they're a minor, you know
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: they are. They're a non major. So they're kind of
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: the set up people, right. They go out and they
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: do the exploration, They provide all the background on on
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: the geology and the and the and the mineralization, and
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: then they try to attract a major that would come
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: in and invest billions of dollars and actually operate the
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: mind How many people we talked about this outfit, you know,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know at this point. Maybe yeah, I wouldn't know.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: There's been a couple of figures that have been prominent
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: throughout the years. There was a guy named Bruce Jenkins,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: you know, that was profiled by Travis Rummel and Ben
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Knight and Red Gold. And that guy was great. He
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: was like right out of Central Casting. I mean, everybody
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: hated him immediately. And then uh, and then there's a
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: guy named John Shiveley. He used to work for the
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Alaska Department and Natural Resources and he had to resign
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: and during a vail of disgrace years ago, and you know,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: he's just kind of like old Alaska, and it's like
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: trust me, you know, I would never do anything that
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be for the benefit of the public. And he
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: sold a couple hundred thousand dollars of pebble stock just
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: a couple of months ago and then um like dumped
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: or sold he he sold it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: was you know, it was in a moment when it
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: you know, probably looked like their stock was gonna go down.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: I should I should explain the reverence you just dropped
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: for folks. Red Gold was a film was two thousand seven,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I believe, Yeah, that was profiled. Yeah. I was guiding
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: when it came out, and and it's worth if you
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: want to get some historical perspective on how this has
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: looked and how long has been going on, you should
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: check that one out. Seven. Oh so I went to
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: my first pebble event way before my kid was born,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: because I had already been to a pebble event way
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: before Red Gold. Yeah, I mean it was it was
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: two five was when I first heard of But I
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: was guiding up there then and that was like everybody
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: was talking about this proposal sort of lines were getting
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: drawn at that point. Um, someone told me recently, is
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: it someone at the Northern Is it Northern Dynasties? That
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: what it's called. Yeah, it sounds like a name that
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: you picked to be Like, it's like a name you
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: picked to be an asshole, to be the bad guy,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: the Villainy. I've dealt with these guys for too long.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: I heard he remember recently that someone involved. There someone
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: if they can get this thing across the finish line,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: they get some absurd amount of one. Yeah, guy named
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Tom Collier, and he worked for the Department of Interior
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: under Clinton H and he took this on. And he's
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: good at what he does. You know, he's Yeah, he's
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: a Washington d C insider and what's the carrot in
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: front of his nose? Well, you know, if this thing
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: gets to gets to operation, he gets twelve and a
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: half million bucks. I'll get the guy out in the morning. Yeah. Yeah,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: if they if they get a record of decision signed,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: it's four and a half million bucks. So yeah. We
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: actually ran a little website for a while. They're called
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: cash Grab Collier and it was pretty fun. So that's
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: what he's gotta do. Like he's he's motivated, like he
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: gets like, yeah yeah. And if you look at look
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: at some of the some of the handicappers out there
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: that really understand the mining industry in that world, you know,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: they think that this is there's a lot of incentive
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: for the executives a puble limited partnership to just continue
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: to hype this thing for as long as they possibly can,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: right because as long as people are willing to give
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: them money, willing to invest in their company, they can
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: skim off profits for themselves. Whether they get any closer
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: to a mine or not doesn't really matter, I think
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: to some of them, m hm, there's incentivized along the
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: way to keep bumping. Yeah. Yeah. And they've spent so
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: much money on lobbyists for the last few years there.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: They have actually spent more money on lobbyists in Washington,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: d c. Than any other mining company, and that includes
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: you know, mining companies that are actually running mines five
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: years ago, five or six years ago. I bet my
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: sister in law a thousand dollars a year bet she
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't Alaska. There's a ten year bet where if they
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: hadn't we framed it this way, if a decade went
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: by and they hadn't begun to pull minerals out of
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: the ground. In production. We framed it up in some
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: way like it's more than just you know, testing and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: stuff like in full production. Like Megan Gold, She's gotta
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: give me a thousand bucks. When did you make the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: bet five or six years ago? You're gonna win? Sweet.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: That's the one. That's one is I'm into that. That's
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: the long reason we're sitting here right now. I don't
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: care what your motivations. It takes an army. What is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: going Okay, we just hit like a new there was
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: a new Let's get let's get real detailed. Now, let's
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: get real granular about what's happened over the last month.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: There was some Army core ship, there was some e
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: p A ship like what was happening over the last
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: month or two. So we saw the final environmental impact
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: statement for the Pebble Mind made by who, the Army
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers. Why is it their deal? They are
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: the they are the they are the permit agency. They
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: are the agency that issues the permit and then they
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: go into a consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency about
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: anything that has to do with UH excavating wetlands and
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: impacting water. So it makes it the Army Corps of
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Engineers business because it involves digging stuff and making damns
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: and whatnot. Because you always your Army Corp of Engineers
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: around like the big damns. Then ye okay, so it's
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: it's their deal because it's engineering. So they did a
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: final environmental impact statement which we thought was terrible. You know,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: it was just filled with holes or all these scientific
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: gaps there's you know, we spent a huge amount of
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: time and energy just to analyzing what they put out there,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: and it was it's terrible. Well, but were you motivated
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: to think it was terrible because it didn't come up
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: with the answer you wanted? Or is it like legitimately
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: poorly done. Well, we hired a bunch of people way
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: smarter than me, and that would stake their reputations on
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: the fact that it was one of the worst, if
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: not the worst environmental impact statement they've ever seen. So
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: why was it shoddy? It is done really quickly one
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: and it didn't look at all these you know, projected
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: impacts out over out over the time horizon, like didn't
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: look at catastrophic tailing, damp failure, UM and the e
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: I s. They they were talking about a wastewater treat
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: and facility that had never been operated before. Um. They
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: they we're trying to figure out how to build the
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: port out there on the west side of cook Inlet,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: which is not a not an easy place to build
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: a port, and they were just huge gaps asked. You know,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: it was just like we're gonna we say, we're gonna
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: do this, and then there would just be a big
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: gap as to how they were going to actually achieve
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: that and then build a port. Yeah, right, because you's
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: got to land all this equipment and build roads to
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: get it there. And yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: you're dealing with cook Inlet, which is the second highest
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: tide fluctuation in the world, and starting about now, the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: weather really gets bad on a very consistent basis. So
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: we lots of gaps, lots of holes, lots of technical details.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: So we think needed to be figured out with someone
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: leaning on them to get it done in a hurry
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: because they're just driving towards resolution. Yeah, so massive development project.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: You know, scaling scope has unprecedented in Alaska since they
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: discovered a while in the our slope. And you're gonna
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: get an eis done in two years. So we're the
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: final environmental impact statement came out and then they have
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: to wait thirty days before they can issue a record
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: of decision. Who does the Army Corps. So there's like
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: this thirty day waiting period after the environmental impact statement
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: comes out and we were expecting to see it pretty quickly,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: and then uh, we started to see concern expressed by
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump Jr. And Nick Ayers, who was the chief
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: of staff to back up, come confused. The Army Corps
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: of Engineers does like the assessment, like here's what's gonna
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: look like, here's risks, and then they deliver the final
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: environmental Impact Statement to the public, and then there's a
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: thirty day period between the issuance of that final and
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: what's called the record of decision. That's the minimum. The
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: record of decision is made by the Corp of Engineers.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: So they make the report, the they wait thirty days
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: and pretend to not know what the decision is. Yeah,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: but I don't get like, because they're making room for
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: public input, there's no more public input. I don't really
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: know what that thirty day period is about. You'd have
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: to ask a lawyer, is it like you lay out
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: all the pages, then you got one that you don't flip,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: and you're like, and I'll flip this one in thirty days. Yeah,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: sort of like that. At least that's what it felt
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: like to us. You know, this thing seemed rigged, is it?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: The part of the Core is doing putting together that
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: that report, and then there are other oversight committees or
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: bodies within the Core that are looking at that. Yeah, well,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: there's usually probably a little bit, a little bit of
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: a paperwork exercise between that that final and the record
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: of decision. There's probably something they have to craft that
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: justifies the record of decision, right, And then then it
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: would go to the Army Corps for this consultation about
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: whether they were going to issue or whether the whether
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: the Army Corps was gonna give a thumbs up or
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: thumbs down to that Dredge and Phil permit. And we
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: thought it felt like a fad, a complete that the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: record of decision was going to hit the streets, that
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: the that the Environmental Protection Agency was just gonna you know,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: not really weigh in one way or another, or they
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: would say it was fine, and then we're going to
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: be going into court um, because that's that's the thing
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: is like whatever the Army Corps. Now we're getting into
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: future alternate reality. But the Army Corps does this, They
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: do the record of decision and they say like we're
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: not We're on this is good, no problem. Um. At
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: that point, if no one challenged it, at that point,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: were they like, it's off to the races we're making.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: Of mind if no one said, if there was no
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: one around to say no, yeah, yeah, that would be
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: like that that that's the last hurdle. If the Environmental
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: Protection Agency decided not to weigh in via the Clean
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Water Act, no one sued challenging the record of decision, Yeah,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: that would be a it's not like the other person.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: You gotta go ask permission from right because the state's
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: on board. Well then the state there there are a
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: bunch of state permits. But perfectly honest, they're pretty that
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: that those gears are greased. I mean, it's the it's
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: the it's the four or four Dredge and Phil permit,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: which is the permit, and that's the one that's been
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the source of this tug a war for you know,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: back to the last presidential administration. Like that's the big win.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: That's that's that's that's the prize. So so they finished
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: the report, and the issue the report. You look at
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: the report like this report is kind of shoddy. And
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: then also everywhere in the news is people weighing in, Um, yeah,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: including you know folks we didn't expect to weigh in,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump Jr. And Nick Arris who was
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: chief of staff too, Vice President Pence, and TALMR. Carlson
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: on his show, and what's these guys great with it? Well,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: I think you know, from what I understand, Um, both
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Trump Junior and Heiress have been out there quite a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: few times, and you know, it's it's it's a one
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: of a kind place. They're just like, yeah, yeah, that's
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: my sense was like, you know, the kind of the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: slogan of wrong mind, wrong place. Yeah, it seems to
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: have been like it was just as clean as that,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: I think, So, you know, and I think for them,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: they've probably heard about it years because it does attract
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of hunters and anglers and you know, people
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: that don't self identify as you know, lefty environmentalists. You know,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's a source of a bunch of jobs
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: and it's this great hunting and fishing destination. It's it's
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things that actually brings people together.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: And I think they just identified it one. I think
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: they actually really care and too they saw it as
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: you know, good politics. And so then what so then
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: what happened? I mean now we're talking like within the
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: last few weeks. Yeah, So then the Army Corps of
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Engineers came back and said, you know what, we're not
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: going to sign the record of decision right now because
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: we need Pebble to go back and provide some more
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: detail about how they're going to mitigate the destruction of
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: wetlands associated with the development. So that's where we're at
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: right now. They are saying that they will have that
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: mitigation plan done within a month, and that's okay. Sorry,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: well I was gonna say that. I think that's where
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I personally got sucked into thinking we had another one
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: of those moments of like turning point. I did a
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: whole thing on on bent about this, saying like, hey,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: look at this great decision that came through, and I
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: got flooded with emails from folks who know more than
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: me and said like no, no, no, no, hold on
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: the permit as written was kicked back. This is this
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: is gonna keep going. There will be a revision and
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: another process. This is this is not at all over.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of a lot folks had
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: a moment like, hey, we got it. Oh. I had
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: one of those about thirty seconds and then I saw
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: that people like, it's just another punt, and I got
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: sucked into it and had to then make a slight
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: retraction on the next episode, say I didn't get all
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: the all the facts straight on this one. Does the
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: president have authority to just kill it? Yeah? By what mechanism?
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Because they know you don't just run around like ending things,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: and I mean it's like you do. You do things
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: through processes, right, It would be telling the head off
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: the e P a region that's in charge of Alaska,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: saying like, here, allowed to use your authority under the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Clean Water Act to reject the dredging phil permit to
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: use your veto authority. And that's what the last administrator
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: did under Obama. So yeah, because you see how things
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: work like that, Like I was in me used recently
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: to see that um that like Attorney General bar right,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: like in a call with attorneys general gives kind of
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: like guidance like we would like to see, you know,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: we would like to see action taken in these areas.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: And then people are like, Okay, so cool, Yeah I
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: can do that. So I can imagine there could be
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: presidential sort of you know, even him just saying it's
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: not gonna happen. It will never let it happen. Right,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: if you were to say that, it would require like steps.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: You know, It's not like he can't just like you know,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: say that on Twitter and have that be the end
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: of it. It would have to be that it would
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: flow that way. Yeah, and and and you know, and
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: then some some of our cohorts think that short of
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: using that e p A veto the the Army Corps
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: could just reject the permit. That doesn't reject it forever, right,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: and it it kind of kicks the can down the road.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: But it would be significant, there's no doubt. But now
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: there's been another tweet that came from the president, uh
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: where he very hard, very hard to interpret, where yeah,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: he borrowed directly from an ad that was running on
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: television that evening that had been put up by the
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Pebble Limited Partnership saying keep politics out of this, and
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: then they flashed to a picture of Barack Obama in
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: a tan suit, which just like Obama didn't like the
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: mind Obama Obama's e p A. You know, I said,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: we won't, we won't permit it. I mean Obama went
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: to he went to Dillingham, he went to Bristol bay
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: Um near the end of his his term. So so
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: they're keeping politics out of it, um. But I don't know.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: I read like I read and analyze that tweet, but
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that tweet meant. No, that's the
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: thing is, no one knows now, right, and for those
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: of us have been working on it for so long,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: and I seeing all these twisting he said, like, don't
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: Alaska is a beautiful place, great place. We'll keep politics
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: out of it. I guess it depends on who's politics, right.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know how I can keep I don't know
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: how anyone could promise to keep politics? Like what politics
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: is the means by which the public's voices her Like,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know when people say that, like keep politics,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: it's like it's annoying. Is when people say following the science, Yeah,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: I was like, who's hey, who's science. Right. The ones
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: that say it's a sweet damn are the ones that
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: this greatest damn ever made. We're the ones that say
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: your damn won't work. It's like like it's like a
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: non people say that keep politics. It's like a nonstatement.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: It's like it's like it's empty air. I never understand
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: what that means. I know, yep, does that include my
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: opinion in that I vote? Like I don't know? Yeah,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: so I didn't know what the hell that man I
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: mean into To your point from earlier, Steve, if you
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: like were to plot out of timeline on this right,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: there was the some major moments of the big big
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: minding company pulling out and say it's not worth it. Oh,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: it looked like it was gone, okay, great, And then
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: there was the moment when the e p A under
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: last administration said we're not gonna permit this. Okay, it's done,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: and it just it's like the zombie issue, right. And
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: then there was that a couple of weeks ago when
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: when people like me who got sucked in momentary and thought, oh,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: I think we made another No, no, we haven't made
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: another step forward. We're just stuck in the same limbo.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I thought the watershed moment was when you had a
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: rare circumstance where hippies, Native Alaskans, commercial fish hereman in
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: brown bear guides, I'll agreed on something. Yeah, I was like, dude,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: no way, that doesn't happen. Letn't make a bet. I
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: bet you a thousand dollars. Well that's still going on, right,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: you know. The opposition is as high as it's ever been.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: We actually did a poll not that long ago and
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: on a development issue, and I'll ask a six of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the population opposes pebble, and like I don't remember, like
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: a quarter of the population supports it. That never happens,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: you know, whether you're talking about drilling for oil and
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and I don't know where
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: we are, and like logging in the tongas anymore. You know,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: I think that that's kind of moved more towards opposition
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: than support. But pebble Alaskans don't want pebble. And the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: closer you can get to the pebble prospect other than
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: a couple of small communities that have a huge pebble presence,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: they don't want it. Yeah, when you got guys like
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: I would like to have permission to kill any marine
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: mammal that comes near my salmon. Oh and stop pebble mind. Yeah,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Like that's it feels like, you know, to me, feels
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: like they'll they'll never be able to do this. I
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: want to shoot sea lions, but I hate pebble. So
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: what is there any there's no real death for this,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Like there's no way, like you can't in Yeah, because
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: they tried the state referendum and that didn't work. You
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: remember this one. There was a state vote to to
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: like basically took it to the voters through something that
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: kind of would have been deathly to pebble. Mind. But
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: it was too far reaching, right, and it was because
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: you couldn't get on People couldn't get on board with
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: it because it was had uncertain implications for the future.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: There's two things. So there was a referendum that passed
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: and it passed into every precinct in Alaska, and that
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: was bankrolled by the late Great Bob Gillham, who was
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: the rich guy who actually went to Wharton with Donald Trump.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: And it essentially said that the state legislature would have
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: final say over the permitting of pebble. It if it
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: ever got to the point where they got to the
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: final state permit, then the legislature would have to vote
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: up or down on it. Pebble claims that it's unconstitutional,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: and they said they'll sue it a later date if
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: need be. But that doesn't stop it because under our
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: state constitution, the public can't appropriate land. So you had
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: to do this like bureaucratic thing. Then there was another
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: initiative that would have updated safeguards for you know, development
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and salmon habitat, and I was a big part of that,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: and we just got outspent and like ten or twelve
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: and one, and you know, it was it was not
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: an easy read for the public, and we went down
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: to defeat um. What could happen as the right thing
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: is done through the federal government via the Clean Water Act?
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: Pebble decides to walk away UM and then the state
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: of Alaska does not allow another mining company to come in,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: and you know, top file on those claims, and then
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: you know, ultimately you would have to get a governor
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: and a legislature and public will and Alaska to say
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: that we're going to take this land and we're gonna
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: put it into a protected status and we could we
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: could do that. Actually that's the way you'd steal the
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: coffin and then you know, probably gonna be another fifteen years.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: But if that's what it is. X. Yeah. You ever
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: hear this thing called the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Yeah,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: I know, given something a cool name doesn't necessarily no now,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: you know. But but you know, I have a lot
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: of friends people have known for a long time worked
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: on that issue. But pebble is different because so many
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: people use it, so many people depend upon it for
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: their livelihood, and you know, even by Alaska standards, it's
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: not a pedestal, right, very few people are lucky enough
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: to go to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, But a
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: lot of people go to Bristol Bay, like where I
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: live in Homer, there's a whole fleet, you know, every
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: every June they getting their gill netters and had a
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: cross cooking let and chake the road over to like
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Ilama and out the queen Jack to go fish and
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: then see him eight weeks later and tell me how
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: shit either season was. But they all seem to have
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: nice houses and nice trucks and things like that. So
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: when I made my bet with my sister in law.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: I also told her that there would be um resistance.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: There would be what's it called um, you know, like
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: like not not vigilanti, but social disobedience. Is that the
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: term that fits The people go out and chain themselves
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: the bulldozers and ship like that. I'm gonna chaine my
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: daughter to something or another landing strip or something. Civil disobedience,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: civil disobedience. I was like, they're probably civil disobedience because
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: it means so much to people. You know, you gotta
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: handful of people that like, you gotta handle people, They're
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: gonna make them bunch money. But then you got a
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: bunch of people spend a decade, in a decade of
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: a decade's worth of emotion being like you can't just
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: there's some things you can't shut up, Like there's some
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: things that are too precious and beautiful and you just
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: have to be comfortable leaving it. And I feel like
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: that some people are so impassionate about that that in
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: the end, when all the legal stuff was done, there'd
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: be like one last push where people got nasty monkey
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: wrench gang. Yeah. I would never advocate for something like that,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: but but I'm not saying that you need to advocate for.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: You don't need to imagine, you know. I I have
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: heard you know, people kind of looking at this issue
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: from not you know, the perspective, the narrow, too close perspective,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: too close to the screen perspective of me saying like, yeah, this,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: you can see how this if everything went wrong from
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: the regulatory and legal framework, you know, you could see
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: this being like Keystone XL. You know, where you have
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: people laying down in front of things, and you know,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: you start thinking about the people in that region, how
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: long they've been fighting against this thing. They can trace
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: their history back there ten thousand years, and they really
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: don't want it. That's what I'm getting at. Man. Yeah,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: there's that whole concept of social license and the and
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: develop and they know the development industry and mining in particular,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: and there's pebble does not have social license. I don't
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: think they'll ever ever get it, no matter how much
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: money they spend, how much propaganda they put out there,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: it's just never gonna happen. Where is it gonna sit with?
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: If if let's say old Biden wins, still don't see
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: anybody's find a Biden flag. If Biden wins, I don't
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: imagine it's gonna Pebble is gonna move for four years
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: now he did, he didn't if you know he was
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: elected president, Pebble doesn't move forward. That's four that's four years. Yeah,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: that doesn't That doesn't kill anything. That just means it
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: would probably just stall out. Right. Then you get into
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: future administration, do you think that they would actually like
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: do you think the Biden's team would just be like
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: not cooperative and it would just be quiet, or do
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: you think Biden's team would come in and like try
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: to like wrap it up. We would, we would, you know,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: we would try to convince them to do that, to
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: do some things that would make it extra hard for
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: the next people try to fire. Honestly, you know we're
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: gonna try, and some of our courthorts are gonna try
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: no matter who's the president. So but Biden Biden did
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: tweet uh saying that Pebble is a non starter if
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: he's president. I was having a conversation one time with
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: some people close to the current administration, and I was like, man,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: I don't see, like why not just take a why
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: not just take a conservation win? That is it going
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: to cost you? You guys are gonna lose. You're not
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: gonna lose Alaska. How many how many delicates is Alaska have? Well,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: we've got one rep. You know, and our or electoral
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: votes don't matter. Yeah, that's what. Sorry, not delicate, you're
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: the electoral the electoral college. Like, you're not gonna lose Alaska.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: If you did lose Alaska. It's like you're not gonna
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: lose it anyway. They won't lose it, like Trump's I
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: canna lose Alaska if you didn't lose Alaska. It's not
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: that main electoral votes. It's like you're gonna piss off
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: Alaska's governor who's under recall. Recall, Okay, you're gonna off
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: that got kicked down the road, but you're gonna piss
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: off their governor, but you're still going to carry the state.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: It's like, I don't see the mining company isn't even
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: a US company. I don't see why not just like,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: why not just take the conservation win. Yeah, it's a big,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: high profile thing. You can then go and you know
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: that certainly they'll do all the things. They're gonna piss
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: off hunters and angers in other places, and it's just
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: like part of life. They might even do it. A
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: cynic might be like, oh yeah, they could kill pebble
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: and it'll be it'll provide air cover to be able
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: to do more work in anoir. There's all these like
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: you know, there's all these like cynical perspectives, but why
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: not just take the wind and and then whatever you
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: do down the in the future. You can look and
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: be like, but but we helped you guys out on
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: pebbles to shut up. What was the response that you
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: got to that they weren't like, okay, we're on it
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: like that. This is a conversation. I agree with you.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: It seems like just a way to if nothing else,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: man just accepted as cover for cover for what you
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: got to do down the road. No one's gonna punish.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: No one's gonna punish you. Now, no one's gonna punish you.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe like the American Mining Association, But they'll
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: get over it. I mean, there's there's all kinds of
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: talking even in the mining industry that this is you know,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: this drags us all down, you know, the optics around it,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: the human rights issue, the fishery, the economics. It makes
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: us all look bad. Yeah, they'd be like, next time
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: we do something, just keep your mouth shut, you know,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: I just keep coming I keep yeah, exactly, I just
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: keep coming back to the quality of the environmental impact statement. Right,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: it's so bad that it's just gonna it's just gonna
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: make people take a harder look at every other environmental
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: impact statement for every other mind elsewhere in the United States.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: It's like, is this a new standard? If this is
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: new standard, just gonna be in court forever. And that's
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: what I just keep trying to, you know, pound away.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: It's like, this is a the set the size, type,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: and location of pebble, and the diversity of opinion against it,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: the economic concerns that are you know, pushing you know back,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: just do the right thing. It's one place you would
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: be an interesting activity in the future would be to
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: come in and and and take a look at, uh,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: how how much money was spent on lawyers through this process.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: Lawyers like that industry has to be like, I don't
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: care what they decide in the end, but this has
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: been quite good for us. Yeah, I mean lawyers, uh,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: you know, public relations firms advertising things like that. I
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: don't know. I was like an economic it's like like
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: debating pebble as an economic driver. Yeah, you know it's
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: funny because you hear that. It's like, well, you know
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: you ain't work on this, tim because you know it
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: makes you money, like you can I would get rich, No,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: I would. I would love if tomorrow do you get
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: four million dollars when they get rejected. I am not
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: getting a four and a half million dollar nor a
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: twelve and a half million dollar bonus. It's not happening.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: I would love to have no other role of playing
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: this then to go visit some friends and go catch
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: some trout. You know, we haven't we haven't talked about
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: what you're like, what what banner you fly under. So
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: the name of the outfit I am sort of in
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: control of, in charge of is It's called Salmon State. Um.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: The the whole idea of we want to make sure
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: that Alaska remains a place where salmon thrive, and you know,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Alaska is kind of last remaining salmon state and where
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: we promote laws and policies and and practices at in Sherre.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: Alaska remains the home of the greatest wild salmon resource
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: on the planet and the source of food and income
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: and culture. For people across the political spectrum. My brother
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: had a good point. We're talking about we're talking about
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: the conservation movement in the Lower forty eight, and what
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: I was saying to him is I was complaining to
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: him about um Alaskan's and their conservation battles are always
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: coming to the Lower forty eight right through. I was like,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: you like people down there and need to hear about
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: this issue we have now, right, but it's a one
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: way flow. I'm like, how can I never get how
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: can people in Alaska? I never fired up about the
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: conservation asan battles that are being waged down here. Like
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: I know all kinds of people that live in Michigan, Utah, Montana, right, Yeah,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: and we're fired up about your guys issues. We're fired
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: up about Pebble mind. We'd like to protect Annoir. But
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: I never hear from your sons of bitches on anything
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: we're doing down here. Yeah, I think you know within
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: well with like you know, say like Tongas National Forest
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: or the Arctic National Wilife Reft future, those are federal lands,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: so they're owned by every American, So there's always that
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: you know, that concept of you know, you're just as
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: important to the debate as somebody who lives in Fairbanks.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: And that's true. This conversation brought up an observation though
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: that it led to an observation where we were trying
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: to say, like why is it different? And he was
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: saying that conservation in the lower forty eight is a
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: lot about recovery, and it's a lot about land management
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: conservation and um in Alaska is a lot of is
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: more about wildlife management, meaning that they're not trying to
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: repair habitat like down here, wh's trying to fix everything?
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: How do we fix the Columbia River? Right? How do
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: we fix the Meadal Lands in New Jersey? Like? What
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: could ever be? Like it's it's ruined or mostly ruined,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: Like what could we do to hang on to some
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: vestige and make things a little better. The conversation there
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: is like dude, sitting pretty, things look solid and it's
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: just kind of like it's a different fight. Yeah, it's different.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: So it's like holding onto perfect things. Can we just
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: keep the perfect things perfect? It's not like these elaborate
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: plans to try to fix some massive mistake we made
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, and those things are really hard
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: to do and they're really expensive. I mean, that's salmon
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: in a nutshell, right, And that's sort of the premise
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: for why why we're doing what we're what we're doing
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: at salmon stay it is. You just look at recovery
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: efforts all around the Pacific Northwest and in British Columbia
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: when it comes to wild salmon, and they're that's not working,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: you know what, because it's too it's too complicated. There's
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: no way like even if you had all the money
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: and all the willpower, right, it's still be like it's
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: there's still like a sort of component to recovering salmon
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: in the Columbia or whatever. There's still like a component
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: of just like brain power and thought that isn't there,
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: or like engineering that's you know, I mean, it's too hard,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: even with all kinds of money. It's hard. There's too
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: many parts to it. Something like pebbly like it's already perfect,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: it's so easy, just don't ruin it. And I think
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: else you'd be sitting there talking about in a hundred
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: years how we're gonna fix it, and people be like
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: you can't, you know, and lower for you a lot
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: of us, there's still the mythology of Alaska, and I
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: think that there's an investment for for us down here
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: just knowing that it's there right, Like there's there's a
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: different relationship that we have with the idea of Alaska
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: and wanted to get there. I know that was the
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: case for me as a kid, having read all the
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: stories that I read in magazine articles and everything else,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: like that was the place I wanted to go. That
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: was my goal. And just just the value of knowing
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: that it exists in the form that it does brings
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: I think those of us in lower Ford significant positive feelings. Yeah,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: I would sign a deal. I would sign a deal
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: if someone said, Okay, we'll kill pebble mine, but here's
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: the deal. You can't step ever again in your life
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: within two hundred miles of the epicenter of that mine
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: or anything that that water flows into, or any of
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: the streams. You can't go there. Okay, that's fine, I
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: signed that. Be bummed about it, but I'd take that deal.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's not like I need to, you know,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: like never go back again, but I know it it
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: stays protected. Yeah, that's cool. I'd even sign away with
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: my kids ability to go children. Yeah, no, seriously, not
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: only your children and your children's children cannot fish those rivers,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: you know. But that's the thing about that pebble is
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: a little bit different than say the Arctic National Wilife
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: Refuge we were talking about. You know, that is like
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: that is out there and you're either going to develop
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: it or it's just gonna be left alone for caribou
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: and mosquitoes and a few intrepid people, right. I mean,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: Bristol Bay is highly utilized. It just works. You know,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: you have tens of thousands of people make their make
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: their living off that resource, and it's proven that it's
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: sustainable and it's renewable. So it's been that weird. It's
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: a good it's a good distinction. Yeah. I don't think
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: you trying on't think you're trying to sell I don't
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: think you're trying to sell anwar short. But it's a
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: reason distinction definitely not. I'm you know, it's not like
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: it's not elitist. Yeah, yeah, whether it's it's not a museum.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not a park. I mean there are parks,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: but those get heavily heal well by the lodges. You know,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: it's a place that works. It shows that there's actually
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: something between. You can't go there at all and you
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: have to destroy it. That there's something in between. And
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: I think that's kind of what you know, your stuff
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: is all about, right, I mean, getting out there and
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: doing things. Just don't ruin it. That's why I well that.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I came to Alaska and worked in on
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: a same boat and in a canary, and yeah it
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: was miserable, Um, but I just was captivated, you know,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: I just like I gotta go back because of what
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: it represented. You know, lived I lived in southeast for
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: a long time and you worked on a canary and
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: catch I got all my fingers. You must not stayed long. Yeah,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: so but you know, that whole idea of just being
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: able to, you know, go out and all these public
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: lands and essentially do whatever you want except screw it up. No,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: it's amazing how how well it works and how heavily
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: it's utilized like that. That is still mind blow. And
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: I mean you think talking about the number of salmon
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: that are taking out of that system and it's still
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: self perpetuating the number of lodges and boats and planes.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: You know, you feel like you're out in the middle
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: of nowhere, but when you're on those rivers, you're not
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: by yourself. They're people fishing all around you. And yet
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: it's still maintains that character of wilderness incredibly well. It's
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: it's like a really resilient space too, as long as
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: you don't do anything overtly terrible. Those fish keep coming back,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: those nutrients work, the bears are there, the motion there,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: it's holding on. It's a good point I had considered. Man,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: I think there are are there, There are those places,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: but it's a working landscape. Yeah, myle is good. I
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: have one other one that maybe maybe if it's does
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: my own personal desire, And I know you're not a
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: saki expert, but maybe you have the answers. Maybe you don't.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: I was told when I was working up there, and
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: I took this as gospel without digging into it. Soak
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: I only reproducing systems with lakes correct pretty much? Yeah? Yeah?
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: Is it true that they are therefore like micro invertebrate
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: feeders only and they do not eat other fish or
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: creatures as far as I know, they do not. Okay,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: but you're not you're not coming out as like the
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: solid definitive expert on this because I I know it's
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: a weird thing too, but yeah, my brow would be
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: on asked that one. But the other day we're floating
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: the river up there and and uh, they were well
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: colored fish, but my god, they just aggressively chased down
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: spoons and spinners. Only when they're there though, Like, so,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: here's the thing, and that's why I hated guiding for them,
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: because you wanted to get them when they're fresh, and
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: they don't unlike the other species of Pacific salm, and
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: they do not attack generally you're offerings. They just swim
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: right by it. So ninety soccer that you catch the
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: air fresh. If you're doing on Roden reel, you're snagging
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: them in the face. You're just floss them, right. And
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: I was always told that the reason they don't attack
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: lures or spinners, are flies or anything is because they're
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: not accustomed hunting down prey like krill and like like
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: feel like open mouth feeding through. Yeah, exactly, that was
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: my understanding. The old played out, half spawned out fish weird.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: They're like pissed, yeah, like a big angry male. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: you catch predominantly mails, but man, they're pissed. Yeah, defending
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: the spawning reds. Let's put Yeah, we got some some
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: of the guys that we work, some of our crew
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: guys that just can't fish. It's like, now a chance
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: to shine. There you go, I bet you catch one
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: one of these guys. He caught five. And when he
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: cast Johnny that the he'd cast and his cast and
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: he goes like far overhead and kind on his toes.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, like, I understand what you're doing.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: But he casting, like point the rod skyword. The thing
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: is to sort of go up and kind of land
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: by his feet. But the sock had swim over and
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: grab It doesn't matter where you put it, they're gonna
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: find it. It's like, dude, it's your time. He wanted
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: a picture to show his kids. They're cool looking fish
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: when they get a colored pretty cool. They're real pretty
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: all right. Well that I'm kind of exactly ended that
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: where I started thinking that was the case. But I'd
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: love to like get definitive answer if I was. If
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: I'm right about what I'll find out it's in Thanks
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: for making the trip down. Yeah, it's my pleasure to
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: go back where you came from. Now appreciate it. Yeah, yes,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: keep slugging away, man, we will. Well, we should ask
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: a question, what can people do if they if they're
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: interested in help and continue to stop the I got
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: two more questions though. For that one, do you get
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: death threats and stuff like that? I haven't in a
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: long time, you know. I think I think other people have,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: you know, taken on leadership roles and I'm kind of
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: kind of faded into the background a little bit. So
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: that's that's nice. You know, Like like a Lana who
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: would have been great to get down here, she just can't,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: you know, with with everything going on in her community.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: But you know she's She's people are in her face
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: all the time. I mean, the people in like those communities,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: the askanted people in those communities there, they're super tough
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: and really brave. Um. But you know, we've all had
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: our moments where we've been harassed by the by the
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: powers that be. Yeah, and then for Yanni's question, right now,
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: it's just sit and wait or is the stuff people
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: should be doing? Well? You know, you can always weigh
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: in with your elected officials, right you know, because I
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: think there could be a congressional play at some point
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: you know, there's there's been talk of well, the House
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: of Representatives actually passed a spending bill Jared Huffman out
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: of California that no money can be spent on the
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: processing of the Pebble Project Environmental impact statement in fiscal year,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: and the Senate will take up a you know, a
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: companion spending bill and then they'll do some sausage making
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: in theory before the years out and you know, right
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: into the right and your senators asking them to, you know,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: support efforts not to fund the e I S. Look,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: no matter where you are on the issue, you know,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of debate out there about the quality
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: of this thing. And maybe we just take a time
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: out for you. So that's one thing you could do
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: in the the immediate term. And then and then we've
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: got a we've got a website that's a consortium of
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of different groups now stop Pebble mind now
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: dot org and uh, it's got a ton of good
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: information and the way she can win in I'm working
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: on a philosophy, a political philosophy. It's called environmental nationalism. Um.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: Part of this would be this, if it really is
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: the biggest pile of gold in the world. Isn't it
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: sweet that we own it and it's just sitting there
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: and waiting for us. Right, let everybody else copper, Let
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: everybody else screw their area. It's not going anywhere. It's
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: been there for millions of years, maybe billions of years. Um,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: just leave it there. It's not like is that like
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: strike now or we'll never be able to get it. Well,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: that's a real It comes down to something where like
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: America will end, Like America will end, will all die,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: and the American dream will be over, the American experiment
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: will collapse if we can't get some gold there. It is, Yeah,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: and there's nothing to say that in fifty year, a
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: hundred years we won't have the mining technology to take
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: it out of there without scarring the surface and possibly
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: killing Yeah, probably not the crazy witch and rod and
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: just I mean that's the problem with right. There's a
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: lot of it there, but it's low grade. It's a
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: huge excavation. You're saying that we're not smart enough to
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: eventually figure out how to get it out. I'm hoping
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: that we're smart enough that we realize we don't really
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: need gold for anything, you know, like the majority of
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: it goes to jewelry at Walmart and to dowries and
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: you know, for like marriages and other cultures and countries.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like it's a critical mineral copper.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: It's a totally different story. But who knows what we'll
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: figure out as far as renewables go in the future
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: and as far as there's some rare earth minerals there too, right,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: and they talk about that and we're gonna need that
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: for the for the renewable economy. Um. But you know,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: the thing that always stops these guys dead in their tracks,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: it's kind of just the exact opposite of that. It's like, okay,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: well this is in the national interest because you know,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: the Chinese have all these rare earth minerals. Are you
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: telling me you're never gonna sell any of the material
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: that comes out of pebble on the international market? And
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: that just stops the conversation right there. It's just like oil.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: You know, there is no there is no like national
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: market for oil. It's it's all traded on the on
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: the global market. That's how commodities work. Yeah, but I
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: like that, you know, and I've heard that from a
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: lot of people. It's like, why wouldn't we just you know,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: invest against the fact that we actually have this resource
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: in the ground, you know, to speculate on it. It's
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: a different kind of speculation, but it's one that you
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: have to get. You have your cake and eat it too.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: You have a wild salmon run and you get to,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: you know, do weird ship with the stock market that
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: most people don't understand. When I first one on a
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: date with my wife, I bet my body hunter Bucks
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: that I'd end up marriing her after our first date,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: and he's like bullshit. We bet a hundred dollars and
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: I had two years to do it, and he sent
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: me my hunter Bocks. And we also wrote our beat
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: up in a little contract when we were drinking, and
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: so I framed the hunter Bucks in the contract. Right,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: It's not lost on me that there could be a
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: situation in which I would bust that glass and get
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: that hunter Bucks out. It would take a lot. We're
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: not there yet. We haven't been there in the last
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: ten years. Is there a way in which, some way
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: I would break the glass and get the hunter Bucks out?
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: No rivers so long that is not a bend, right, Like,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but right now I like it where
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: it is. I don't want to break the glass people,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: and that's the thing and they all depend on it
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: hopefully never. But I'm just saying, think about it's like
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: it's not going anywhere. There's not like a thing where
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: like it's like if you is that, like, get it
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: now where it's gone. We can afford not to. Like
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: we're rich enough and lucky enough as a country. I
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: won't say rich and lucky because it might be like
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: we're fortunate enough and we've done enough things right as
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: a country that we can have pristine places. It is
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: a tremendous not a look, not like a luxury like
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: we just fell onto it. We've people have done things,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: We have made sacrifices to have places that we can
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: afford to leave and and have cities and have a
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: great economy and do all this and have perfect places,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: perfect places like like God put them there. So we
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: should be jumping up and down with joy. We can
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: pull it off. We can have a hundred bucks in
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: a picture frame hanging on our wall. Well, I'm I'm
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: gonna work really hard to make sure you get your
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: thousand bucks. Please. Other I want you to be two
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: for two. You have a frame up, tenadent. I'm not
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: framing this thousand man. This thouse is going into the
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: family pile. But thank you, all right, thanks for coming down, man,
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: my pleasure. Good luck. Thanks, you know, not for your
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: own sake, but for our good, for everybody. It's like
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: when I say a good luck to someone in Star Wars,
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: right for the Force, that's right, all right, thank you,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: thank you,