The Daily Beast: Under the ocean are rare minerals. We need them to make things like batteries for electric cars. But sea mining could also cause environmental problems. It’s an environmentalist v. environmentalist showdown!
Check out The NYT’s interactive article on how deep sea mining works. Metal deposits build up over millions of years into potato-sized nodules covering the sea floor -- mining them just means scooping or vacuuming them up
CBC breaks down the arguments in favor: 1. If you all want to be carbon-neutral, we’ll need more and more battery metal, 2. To meet demand, we *need* to mine more and 3. Mining in the ocean will hurt the environment less than mining on land -- there’s way less life down there
But The Guardian says this is “false choice”: Either mine and destroy the ocean, or mine and destroy the land. But there are plenty of other options, like using different metals or improving recycling!
Forbes: No way we can “just recycle” enough to meet demand. There are always going to be environmental tradeoffs in going green, but seabed mining will probably have way less impact than traditional mining
And Foreign Policy Magazine reports some scientists are open to testing the idea -- that’ll give us a much better idea of the actual impacts of deep sea mining. Plus, companies seem ready and willing to listen to scientists
This fight is everywhere. Phys.org says that the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority (ISA) has been working on regulations for deep sea mining for a while. In 2021, the Pacific Island nation of Nauru triggered a clause putting the ISA on a 2-year deadline. They want the mining to begin already
Meanwhile, many other island nations are very anti -- Bloomberg reports that Palau, Fiji, Chile, and France want a moratorium. And many companies, including carmakers, have pledged to not use deep sea minerals
Yet in September, the ISA authorized the metal company to perform a “test” mining expedition. Quartz reports say this itself is controversial
And by the way, Politico points out that the U.S. is sidelined for all these ISA negotiations, because it hasn’t ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea
California’s still doing something, though -- on September 20, it banned sea mining in all of California’s waters, reports The SF Chronicle
And The Guardian shows off some pictures of the weird and wonderful animals that mining expeditions put at risk -- check them out here
Nautilus proposes an out-of-the-box alternative: Forget the ocean, why don’t we mine the Moon? No cool sea creatures to kill up there