[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 54 (Tuesday, April 20, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E711-E712]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO HARRISON COBB

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BOB SCHAFFER

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 20, 1999

  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, few people I know have committed as much 
intellectual attention to the topic of natural resources as my long-
time friend and constituent, Mr. Harrison Cobb, of Fort Collins, 
Colorado. My first acquaintance with Mr. Cobb was made in 1987. He 
invited me into his home and spent generous time allowing me the 
benefit of his vast education, experience, and passion for mining.
  Supremely dedicated to preserving the environmental integrity of 
America's western heritage, Mr. Cobb's civic devotion is to influence 
public debate about natural resources issues with balanced opinion 
employing practical, logical, and scientific reason, and historical 
perspective. His persuasive treatment of natural resource questions is 
unmatched. Mr. Cobb is, in my opinion, a giant among his colleagues in 
the field of mineral extraction.
  Mr. Speaker, Mr. Cobb's contributions are bigger still in scope. HIs 
professional talents have been directed toward many of the broader 
topics confronting all Americans: Economics, national character, 
education, and cultural decay are issues about which Mr. Cobb has 
engaged his countrymen and to which he has held many public officials 
accountable.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend the example of Mr. Cobb to my colleagues in 
the House, and hereby submit to the Record for their consideration some 
thoughts of Mr. Cobb's conveyed in a letter he recently posted to me.

                                             Harrison S. Cobb,

                                                  Ft. Collins, CO.
       The world's most important commodity, after air and water, 
     is ROCK. Everything that we use, need and want comes out of 
     rock. Even food, clothing and housing are taken from soil, 
     which is disintegrated rock.
       To get the autos, aeroplanes, trains, toothpaste fluoride, 
     catalytic convertors, printing presses, electric power, 
     running tap water and almost everything else out of the solid 
     rock, it HAS to be mined. Thus far there's no other way to 
     produce it.
       The primary purposes of mountains are not skiing, hiking or 
     viewing. Mountains are the only places where you can walk 
     directly into the inside of the earth and look for those 
     things so necessary to our lives. There may be equally rich 
     sources of gold, copper, iron, platinum, fluorite, tungsten, 
     molybdenum under the Kansas-Nebraska prairie, but who can 
     sink through 2000 feet of sedimentary rock in order to start 
     prospecting for them?
       Here and there natural forces have squeezed the somewhat 
     plastic inside of the earth up through cracks in the 
     sedimentaries, forming protuberances that we call mountains, 
     giving us our only opportunities to see and search for those 
     minerals that occur only inside the earth. This is the 
     primary purpose of and use for mountains.
       The enviros and the bureaucratic Lilliputians who aim to 
     end mining through over-regulation, land withdrawals, Kyoto 
     treaties and UN heritage sites demonstrate lack of education 
     and complete ignorance of fact. In the end, the people will 
     suffer--but who cares about that?
       Congressman Bob: This is just to add to your ammunition. 
     Thanks for good work.
                                                         Harrison.

  Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to Mr. Cobb for his love of our mighty 
nation, for his consistent

[[Page E712]]

exhibition of patriotic spirit. He is truly an inspiration to me to 
continue on our important work advancing the freedom and liberty of our 
beloved Republic.

                          ____________________