In considering devastation of pristine lakes and streams in exchange for a short-term handful of jobs on the Iron Range mining copper +, if we tell them no, it does not mean the world goes without copper wire for generators to light up our homes.

If big mining gets its chance to screw over the north wilderness for a few lousy short term dollars to mining firms from North American [and/or more distant] towns remote from the destruction, it is pure rapaciousness at play, not an either/or sudden-death need for copper now at all costs to Minnesota's northern ecosystem, or perish in a colossal flameout of deprivation from metals needed to make the world go round.

There is Riko Diq.

Let the problematic balancing act be in Balochistan, instead of the Boundary Waters.

Moreover, crap containment in a sparsely populated desert area on the other side of the world has a more promising likelihood of containment working, never mind the additional advantage to us, of it being on the other side of the world.