Editor’s Picks: Top Stories of Week 20

The week ended May 17, the twentieth trading week of 2008, was punctuated by a massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province that killed at least 40,000 people, left millions homeless and damaged much of the province’s infrastructure.

• The quake, China’s worst in three generations, also had repercussions in the global metals markets, since the region is a major centre for zinc smelting and aluminum refining. With China ranking as the world’s biggest zinc producer, zinc prices firmed after the earthquake, as Chinese producers were forced to shut down 11% of their smelting capacity.

• Political correctness gained a huge victory over science in the U. S., with the Department of the Interior adding the polar bear to the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). It concluded that past and anticipated melting of sea ice is devastating the bear’s habitat.

The ruling is full of untenable contradictions. Most glaringly, the department sees “greenhouse gas-induced climate change” as the primary reason for the ice melting, but still emphasizes — under pressure from the Bush Administration — that oil and gas development in the Arctic isn’t threatening the polar bear.

This kind of irresponsible double-talk won’t withstand the flood of court challenges that are bound to be launched by environmental groups that will use the ESA as a club against all carbon emitters in the U. S., including emissions from automobiles and power plants in the lower 48 states. Once the environmentalists pile up their victories in court, major carbon emitters in the U. S. will be forced by law under the Endangered Species Act to reduce their emissions, and all new industrial-scale carbon emissions will have to approved in accordance with the ESA.

Putting the polar bear on the endangered species list is a watershed moment that will constrain U. S. economic growth and industrial activity for years to come.

Canada, which hosts 15,000 of the world’s 25,000 polar bears, is so far not elevating the status of the polar bear, which is currently a species “of special concern.” However, Canadian environmentalists take much of their direction and funding from their U. S. counterparts, so the polar bear issue will likely heat up here, too, in the years to come, even though the population is strong and many Inuit count on income from hunting the bears.

• There was darkness and grief in the tight resource community in Quebec, as Nancy Michaud, an aide to Quebec’s Natural Resources Minister Claude Bchard, was abducted from her Rivire-Ouelle home while her two boys slept and murdered inside an abandoned house a few kilometres away.

Provincial police have arrested and charged neighbour Francis Proulx, 29, with first degree murder, and may soon add charges for kidnapping, confinement and robbery.

• Demonstrating Colombia’s excellent gold potential, Colombia Goldfields tallied the first National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource at its Marmato project in Colombia, outlining 2.6 million oz. gold in 75.8 million inferred tonnes grading 1.05 grams gold per tonne. The resource is based on the first 12,200 metres of a planned 60,000-metre diamond drilling program, plus other work.

• Showing just how hard it can be to get the market’s attention these days, Carpathian Gold’s shares barely moved as the company announced more exciting drill results from its newly discovered copper-gold porphyry deposit, named Ciresata, which is the third economic-sized porphyry found at its wholly owned Rovina exploration licence in Romania. Carpathian cut 163 metres of 1.04 grams gold equivalent per tonne.

• Goldcorp reached a milestone by pouring its first gold at its huge Penasquito polymetallic mine in Zacatecas, Mexico. The company reports that nearly 2 million tonnes of ore has been stacked on the heap-leach pads, and that gold recovery is meeting or exceeding expectations. At commercial rates, Penasquito is expected to annually produce more than 400,000 oz. gold, 30 million oz. silver and substantial zinc and lead.

Send your Letters-to-the-Editor and other op-ed submissions to the Editor at: tnm@northernminer.com, fax: (416) 510-5137, or 12 Concorde Pl., Suite 800, Toronto, ON M3C 4J2.