Rolf Westgard, who comments occasionally here at MinnesotaBrown, poses an interesting commentary in today’s Duluth News-Tribune, connecting human population growth, the use of natural resources and northern Minnesota’s economy. He even gets in a plug for high speed rail, which makes my recommendation even easier to give.
An honors graduate in mathematics from Cambridge, [Thomas Robert] Malthus argued that the human sex drive can produce geometric increases in population per the series 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. At the same time, the Earth can, at best, provide increased resources at an arithmetic rate, such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
With that in mind, let’s reflect on the motives behind Essar Global’s acquisition of Minnesota Steel Industries (“Indian firm will build steel plant,” Oct. 23). Was it to build a high-cost steel plant on the Iron Range? Or was it to obtain a billion tons of precious taconite ore to feed the steel plants Essar already owns in Canada, Ohio, and West Virginia?
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