Rep. Stansbury Calls for Bipartisan Action on Climate Change and Sustainable Critical Minerals Solutions During First Natural Resources Oversight Subcommittee Hearing as Ranking Member
VIDEO LINK: Watch Rep. Stansbury’s closing remarks here. The full hearing is available here.
WASHINGTON—During her first hearing serving as the Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury (N.M.-01) urged her colleagues to focus on creating a sustainable critical mineral supply chain to build clean energy infrastructure and urgently decarbonize the U.S. economy.
According to recent findings from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the most accessible solutions to bolstering a domestic supply chain include recovering, recycling, and substituting minerals.
Rep. Stansbury advocated for science-based solutions in her closing statement. “We cannot mine and permit our way to a solution…I don't think that anyone in this room wants to return to an era when we had rivers on fire, when smelters were poisoning children and communities across the country... What we need to do is really take an approach that is smart, that is science based, that is a human rights-based approach that really addresses this issue from all aspects.”
Rep. Stansbury further pointed to bipartisan actions in the 117th Congress to secure critical mineral supply chains. “This last Congress, we passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law…[which] includes a number of provisions that will help to build out a sustainable supply chain for our critical minerals. We also passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August…. which sets us on a path not only to clean energy for the United States, but energy independence, and the ability to address the catastrophic change that will happen from global climate change. The future of our country of our communities and of our children depends on bipartisan action on this issue.”
BACKGROUND
Alongside House Democrats in the 117th Congress, Rep. Stansbury helped pass keycritical minerals provisionsin the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act that will help decarbonize the economy by making the single largest investment in clean energy in global history.
Rep. Stansbury’s opening statement, questioning, and closing remarks as delivered are below.
Opening Statement (12:58)
Thank you, Mr. Gosar, our Chairman. It's an honor to be able to serve alongside you and welcome to our first Subcommittee on Oversight. It's with great joy that I am able to serve as the Ranking Member. I want to thank our witnesses and guests today. And of course, all of our Members who are here for the first time today.
I'm Melanie Stansbury, and I represent New Mexico's First Congressional District, which is right in the heart of Central New Mexico. It's a vast rural district that includes Albuquerque, and many of the surrounding rural and Tribal communities, which are greatly affected by the work of the agencies that this Committee and Subcommittee have jurisdiction over. These issues that we cover in the Natural Resources Committee at large and especially the oversight that we do in this Committee are of great personal concern to me and to the communities that I represent, not only because of the significance of the beauty in public lands and waters that are within my district, and the Tribal communities that I helped to represent and collaborate with, but also because I myself, am a science professional who's worked in natural resources for more than 20 years. I've worked in water resources and drought management since the beginning of my career, and worked on the counterpart of this committee in the Senate Energy Committee for a number of years, and in the Office of Management and Budget.
In fact, during my time working in the Office of Management and Budget, I was actually the budget and policy analyst who oversaw the budget for the Bureau, the USGS, and the critical minerals issues that we are talking about today. So this is actually a topic that I have worked on for many years, including during my time in the Senate Energy Committee, where I also worked on critical minerals, issues in a bipartisan manner with my counterparts on the Committee.
So the issues that we're going to discuss today are near and dear to my heart. Of course, they are of national strategic importance. But before I dive into that, I just want to take a moment since we are beginning the Subcommittee's work, to talk about some of the priorities that we're hoping to work on over the course of this Congress.
And I hope and I'm optimistic that we will find opportunities for bipartisan collaboration, not only for policies to advance the needs of the American people that we represent, but also to conduct appropriate oversight and to root out waste, fraud and abuse, which, of course, is our role here on the Oversight Committee.
And among the many issues that this committee will take up in which we are hoping to prioritize, and our oversight and policy role, our issues around the climate and clean energy transition, and in particular, helping to empower our communities so that they can determine their own economic futures in the process.
New Mexico is an energy-rich state of all forms of energy. And as we are making this transition to a clean energy future, it is absolutely critical that our workers, our unions, our communities have a strong voice, and every aspect of how we plan those local, regional and national economies, it's also crucial that we develop the workforces that help to support the development of those industries and to help transition those who are going to see new opportunities as we build out a climate resilient grid and energy future.
In addition to that, obviously, this Committee has broad jurisdiction over public lands, forests and waters. And to the extent that the oversight committee takes up issues on takes up issues surrounding those, we'll be working on those issues as well, as well as upholding our responsibilities to our tribes. So the issue that we're here to talk about today, of course, is critical minerals. And as we know, critical minerals and as the chairman discussed, are crucial to the future of the United States.
Up until the 1990s, the U.S. was a net exporter of rare earth minerals. And due to trade policies that began obviously in the 1980s and extended into the 1990s, American mining companies were no longer able to compete due to global prices. And as a result of that we saw the rise in especially Chinese investment in mining, not only in China, but across the world.
Recent efforts by the Chinese government to stockpile and to restrict the trade of these elements have put the United States and other global countries at risk for the United States. This is a national security issue. This is an issue that affects every aspect of our economy as we're completely dependent every single one of us on these electronics that run our lives these days and every aspect of our lives.
So the question before us is, how do we responsibly develop our critical minerals supply chain—through recycling and reuse innovation, international trade relationships and making the best and most appropriate use of existing resources in the United States. Let me be clear, we cannot mine and permit our way out of this problem.
There may be mining solutions that may be a part of what we have to do, but that is not the sole solution to addressing our critical minerals and national security shortage. So I look forward to working with the Chairman and with that I yield back.
Questioning (53:30)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I would like to start by welcoming Mr. George first. My mother was an operating engineer and I come from a union strong family. So really appreciate you here being with us and representing the workers of your local and of course, all the operating engineers.
And I wanted to also use this opportunity to say—I shared this with the Committee yesterday, as we were talking about both mining and oil and gas issues—that I was born while my parents were actually working, my mom was a machine oiler that worked at a coal-fired power plant in Farmington, New Mexico, and my dad was a welder in the oil and gas fields. And it was because of the fallout of the oil and gas industry in the early 80s, that my family actually had to leave that community, and ultimately, why I grew up in the biggest city in New Mexico.
And so I understand very intimately because of my own family history, how big international global issues around our domestic production of minerals, and fossil fuel production really affects the families and workers of this country. And we take those issues very, very seriously. And I think, obviously, your testimony highlights that. But I also think that it's important to recognize that much of what has happened around mining in the United States. And its decline is not because of domestic policy, but because, as we heard, hear from Mr. Moats and others is really has to do with international trade and commodity prices at the international level.
And I think, you know, Mr. Mintzes, highlighted this in his testimony. But it's important to recognize in this hearing that this is not only a issue of strategic and national security for the United States, this is a problem for every major country in the world, who is our ally, who depends on these resources for manufacturing for national security purposes, and for just general economic development. This is not just a U.S. problem. In fact, there are dozens of countries in Europe and Asia and Africa and others that are dependent on these resources and are unable to source them through the global supply chain right now.
And we're not just talking about one mineral, we're talking about dozens of minerals, right. So just opening a mine in a place is not going to solve this problem, because we're talking about dozens of minerals, that would have to be sourced from many different geologic formations from all over the world as they currently are. But the problem is, is that we cannot responsibly source these materials right now, because they're in places where we do not have ally relationships, there are human rights abuses happening, and because we do not have responsible practices happening.
So there's not a simple solution here I want that's one of the things that I really want to highlight, we need a multi-pronged approach, we're going to have to work with our allies who are also seeking these minerals to ensure that we are doing responsible sourcing, especially if that is abroad.
It doesn't mean we just open a mine to do it here in the U.S., it means that we have to actually utilize and help use our international support systems and policies to help ensure that we are holding accountable those multinational corporations, some of which are based in the United States and elsewhere, to the highest possible human rights and environmental standards, whether they are operating here in the United States, and employing our operating engineers and all of our miners, or whether they're operating abroad. So we really need to use every possible tool at our disposal. But I want to take the rest of my time to really focus on the circular economy that Mr. Mintzes brought up here. Now we know that recycling, reuse and design is not going to be the only solution. It's only part of the solution. But it represents a significant portion of the supply chain that is underdeveloped right now in the United States.
And as Mr. Mintzes has stated, is underdeveloped from a policy standpoint with respect to other countries. So Mr. Mintzes, could you please share more? What exactly is the circular economy what is entailed in it and what does the United States need to do to really advance its circular economy?
Mr. Mintzes: Thank you Ms. Stansbury for that question. Most of us, some of us may remember bottle bills or deposits when you could turn in a can or a bottle and receive a nickel or a dime back. That's effectively what we're talking about.
Closing Statement (1:42:52)
But I do want to just take this opportunity, as we're closing out this hearing to just revisit some of the discussion today. And, you know, I really want to frame this conversation around the urgency of this issue. I think some of that got lost in the details today.
This is not only a national security emergency for the United States, this is about making sure that we can make good on our responsibility to ensure that we are not passing a global tipping point and climate change over the next decade. If we do not address these supply chain issues, we will not be able to implement the technologies and changes to our energy systems that will enable us to cut carbon emissions so that we can hit our carbon emission standards to prevent catastrophic climate change.
So this is an urgent issue. It's a national security issue. It's an economic issue for the United States. And it's a global issue. But in the pursuit of addressing these global and national security issues, we cannot return to this.
We cannot mine and permit our way to a solution. I think as we've heard here today. And I don't think anyone in this room, obviously those of us who serve on this committee cared deeply about nature, the environment, the outdoors. I don't think anyone in this room wants to return to the past, where corporate corporations went into communities made mining claims, and then strip mined them about we have a lot of outdoors people here a lot of fishermen and a lot of people who are hikers and spend time outside. Can you imagine what I am hearing in this hearing.
And I think oftentimes the false equivalency that gets put forward, is the idea that if we just gutted our environmental laws, if we just took away the Clean Water Act, if we just took away the Clean Air Act, if we just got rid of NEPA, we could just open up all these mines and solve this problem. Well, first of all, that's not true. It's not going to solve the problem.
And I don't think that anyone in this room wants to return to an era when we had rivers on fire, when smelters were poisoning children and communities across the country. And where when people went to their favorite fishing spot, or tribal community went to pray, and one of their most sacred sites, they found that a mining claim had been laid and strip mined. I don't think anyone wants to return that to that era. And certainly, I don't think American workers want to return to that era.
So, what we need to do is really take an approach that is smart, that is science based, that is a human rights-based approach that really addresses this issue from all aspects. Of course, we have to address the international security and trade issues. Of course, we have to address the human rights abuses that are happening from the sourcing of some of these minerals. And I want to be clear, this is a mine. With cobalt, we're talking about dozens of different minerals across the world. There are mines that are doing responsible sourcing that do have good labor practices. But what we need is to make sure that we have a multi-pronged approach that addresses these issues.
Finally, I just want to say that this body has already taken significant action to help address these issues. This last Congress, we passed a bipartisan infrastructure law, it makes some of the largest investments in infrastructure in the history of our country in certain sectors, particularly in natural resources. And it includes a number of provisions that will help to build out a sustainable supply chain for our critical minerals.
We also passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August. And while we did not have bipartisan support for that bill here in the house, what I can tell you is that it is the largest single investment in climate action, not only in the history of the United States, but the history of the world. And it sets us on a path not only to clean energy for the United States, but energy independence, and the ability to address the catastrophic change that will happen from global climate change. The future of our country of our communities and of our children depends on bipartisan action on this issue.
And, Mr. Chairman, I deeply appreciate your bipartisanship this morning. And I truly look forward to working with my colleagues across the aisle because the urgency of this issue demands that we do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.