By Greg Brueck
A recent feature article in the online publication Politico highlights Donald Trump’s strategy to win the key state of Minnesota, which he lost in 2016 by a mere 45,000 votes. The state’s so-called “Iron Range” has based its economy on iron mining since the mid-1800s. Changes in recent decades – iron deposits running low, the steel industry shifting its methods and moving overseas – have left the Iron Range with a shrinking economy, a declining population, and limited hopes for the future.
That changed, for some, in recent years with the discovery of massive deposits of nickel and copper in the region, key materials for modern technologies like cell phones and batteries for electric vehicles. Environmental groups have objected and, so far, blocked projects to mine the metals, however, citing the risk of toxic, acidic waste to the area’s lakes and streams. The Iron Range sits at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a million-acre region of undeveloped lakes and forests that reaches to the Canadian border. Statewide Democrats, with their main base of support in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, have opposed plans for new mining, and Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg all promised to stop development of nickel and copper mines in the area. Joe Biden hasn’t yet taken a position.
The standoff has opened a political door for Donald Trump, who supports the new mining ventures and has also gained the attention of local mining interests by imposing high tariffs on foreign steel. “The Iron Range is back in business,” he declared in a speech in October. One result of these political alignments has been a shift in the politics of union miners, a traditionally Democratic constituency that is now trending toward Trump and the Republicans. Chris Johnson, the president of United Steelworkers Local 2705 supports nickel mining, but remains loyal to the Democratic Party. He is having a harder and harder time convincing his rank and file members to stand with him, though, and estimates 75 percent of his membership supports Trump.
What’s happening in the Iron Range is emblematic not just of recent political polarization, but of trends in economic and cultural polarization that have developed in the country over the past several decades. As cities have embraced an information and service economy and grown and prospered as a result, rural areas reliant on extractive industries have fallen further and further behind. Americans consume more material goods than ever, but with the development of efficient global supply chains the raw materials for those goods can be mined and processed anywhere in the world, especially in places with lower wages and fewer environmental regulations than the United States.
Politically, then, environmental protection has become a wedge issue that both parties use to their advantage without truly grappling with issues of global sustainability. It wasn’t always this way in American politics. In the years after World War II, when the environmental costs of rapid industrialization were just coming into focus, protecting the environment for future generations was a bipartisan issue. In 1964, for instance, Congress passed the landmark Wilderness Act, which was among the earliest of a new generation of laws expanding the federal government’s responsibilities for environmental oversight. It established the National Wilderness Preservation System, a new category of protection for federal lands that barred most forms of development and the use of motorized vehicles from designated areas and, equally important, established a ten-year public review process for protecting more such federally owned lands as wilderness in the future. The plan aimed, its sponsors declared, to “secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.” The argument in favor of the legislation, thus, was that protecting public lands was in the national interest. It was an argument that earned wide bipartisan support – the bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 73-12 and in the House of Representatives by 373-1. Part of the reason for the bill’s success was its proponents’ modest goals. Initially, the wilderness system created by the law only comprised about 2-3 percent of the federal government’s total landholding in the West, and these were primarily lands that were not valued for timber, minerals, or other economic uses.
That bipartisanship began to erode, though, as the ambitions for environmental protection grew. The Wilderness Act was so popular, and its backers were so good at organizing grassroots support for environmental protection, that its scope expanded over time. Between 1964 and 1978, Congress added 134 wilderness areas to the system of protection and, at the behest of activist citizens, often protected more land than federal land agencies recommended. While these expansions continued to gain bipartisan support, they were driven by Democrats and they reflected a traditional liberal confidence (that goes back at least to the New Deal of the 1930s) in the federal government’s ability to act in the common interest of all citizens. This idea, in the context of environmentalism, was so popular amongst the public that Richard Nixon, as a Republican president, considered it a political imperative to make environmental issues a centerpiece of his administration’s first-term domestic agenda. He established the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law a wide range of federal environmental measures, including additional wilderness legislation, the Clean Air Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, all of which either vested new powers in, or expanded the responsibilities of, the federal government for addressing environmental issues. Nixon deserves some credit for these, but again, it was primarily Democrats in Congress and their backers in the environmental movement who provided the momentum for this legislation. And this liberal faith in the government both laid the groundwork for the modern environmental regulatory state and provoked the environmental opposition, especially in the West.
What is the significance of this history? Even as Democrats and activists scored victories in environmental protection, they began long-term processes of polarization that have divided Americans and threaten, in places like the Iron Range, to reverse those victories. To protect their political future as well as the natural environment, Democrats must think bigger and more systematically about the challenges that face us all.
Adam Behsudi, “Minnesota on the Edge: ‘I’ve Voted My Whole Life. It’s Getting Tougher’”, www.politico.com, March 22, 2020.
James Morton Turner, “‘The Specter of Environmentalism’: Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right.” The Journal of American History 96:1 (Jun 2009), pp. 123-148.
History Lab 
I was just having a conversation with my wife in which we were over simplifying the two parties by saying Democrats are the “no-fun party, for the sake of the long-term good of the people, country and planet,” while the Republicans are the “smoke ’em if you got ’em” party, more concerned with instant gratification. I’m sure that is colored through my own bias, but nevertheless, I get very frustrated when Republicans play to economic fears and insecurities, to promote industry with no eye towards the future. It seems so obvious to me that the “right” thing to do is to protect the environment (so that we can continue to live on the planet) and channel government resources into retraining blue collar workers for jobs in the growing information and service economy, as opposed to doubling down on “the good old days.” If someone in the class can maybe present the other side of the argument to me in a way that I can understand I’m very open to listening. I don’t think that coal miners who want their jobs back are stupid, nor do I outright reject the argument that says without the means to buy household necessities today what good does looking towards the future do. I know that retraining a whole sector of the economy will be disruptive to the way of life of thousands of families, but speaking from my very liberal bubble, isn’t progress always about disruption?
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I’ll try to answer your question as best I can, Travis. To be clear, I am very much on the side of environmental protection. I do feel for the families whose livelihoods are threatened but, like you said, progress requires change (that can be seen as disruptive). The way I see it, coal mining families are generational. Coal mining goes way back for some of these families, especially those in very rural areas. All they know is mining and there aren’t many job opportunities out where they live. I’ve noticed Republicans are very stuck in their ways, mostly concerned about the short term and disregard the long term consequences. The Democrats’ platform of environmental change make citizens who have lived a certain way for so long is intimidating and (from what I’ve witnessed from members of my own family) tend to hear only what they want. Like you, I don’t judge the coal miners harshly. I understand that the type of change that environmentalists suggest must be very daunting. However, what I think the Democrats should also say, to assuage discontent, would be to reassure them that it would not be an overnight thing. I imagine the change has to be gradual in order to ease them into another, cleaner way to provide energy for the U.S. and support their families. It’s a shame that both parties use such an vital topic as a political tool. I hope I answered your question all right.
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I can only imagine that the reason that Trump is actually wanting to rebuild the “Iron Range” is because he wants to secure the vote of the miners in Minnesota, just to make sure that he wins it. I feel like there are candidates that would do anything to get elected or in this case get re-elected. If that means potentially poisoning local bodies of water, then so be it. I see that its clear that the Democrats still care about the issue of environmental protection, but it does not seem like the Republicans care at all anymore. I’m wondering if its just because of the guy that they have in office or if there is another reason behind it all?
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This is really interesting to think about and brings to mind that for most Americans, humanitarian and universal idealism go out the window once you threaten their immediate financial security. And in my opinion, this is actually easy to understand to an extent. Although I myself, am in favor of preservation and not further destroying our natural land in the name of industry, I also am not relying on that industry to put food on my table. I can understand why people who are concerned with feeding their family and supplying a roof over their heads would rather work than keep our environment safe. I also do find it sad to see how partisan the issue of environmentalism has become. The good of our planet doesn’t belong to a political party, I think anyone who cares about the future and future generations should be in favor of taking pro environmental measures. There are many examples of Republicans taking environmental measures such as you mentioned with Nixon but also with the likes of Teddy Roosevelt who was a leading environmentalist in his time.
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I think it’s insane how some people don’t see the need to protect our environment, and would let greed cloud their judgement. I’m glad that the majority of the Democratic party does prioritize the environment, and has supported movements to protect it. I only wish that the protection and management of our environment wasn’t something that divided the political parties. I feel that uniting on this front could benefit us all in the long run.
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I sometimes cringe whenever there is legislation that is “bipartisan” because it usually means that this bill will ultimately appease the donor class rather than providing a tangible solution to a problem. Iowa is hardly a liberal bubble as is San Francisco, yet the concern for climate change is real. In an article in rollingstone.com titled “How Big Agriculture Is Preventing Is Preventing Farmers From Combating The Climate Crisis” the author, Ryan Bort discusses the challenges of small farmers in Iowa in the face of climate change. After reading this article, I think there is an opportunity for unlikely alliances. In the spirit of REAL bipartisanship, a small farmer and say a member of the Sunrise Movement can have a conversations about tangible solutions to climate change. This is a great article that in some way or another makes you think about meaningful discussions that go beyond recycling.
There should be discussions about multi-national agribusiness, local organic farms and sometimes an overlooked topic in the mainstream climate narrative: the soil. “This degradation of the soil is taking just as heavy toll on the livelihoods of small farmers, who are forced to rely on land that is not healthy, not able to retain water, prone to erosion, and thus not at all resilient to the contingencies of a changing climate.” (Bort, 2019)
WORKS CITED
Bort, Ryan. “How Big Agriculture Is Preventing Farmers From Combating the Climate Crisis.” Rolling Stone. September 19, 2019. https:/rollingstone.com/politics/politics-featured/big-agriculture-preventing-farmers-combating-climate-crisis-886538/
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This seems to happen too much and I agree that the divide between people has become huge because for years we have wanted to help the environment. Although this is true people need jobs and anything done at the political level affects them just as much as these places as Democrats have put up laws to take from their way of life. The Democratic way of life isn’t the only lives of the United States people need to see that in other areas of the world mining was the only thing these people have had and was taken. People in these areas need to know that other things can be done for money, but that may never happen if the Democrats just push progress toward only environment. I completely agree that the environment is hugely at risk but if you don’t find alternative jobs then people like Trump will use the system to just give back their old jobs. The question I have is what job do you supply for these people if you do take away the mining jobs from these people?
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