Tag Archives: deep-sea mining
The Battle for the Ocean Floor
Mining rare minerals and metals from beneath the ocean could avoid the environmental damage of on-shore mining, and fuel our sustainable transition. In the most common version of deep-sea mining, huge excavation robots scour the seabed for polymetallic nodules, small potato-sized clusters of key minerals such as cobalt and nickel. Resources like these are in high demand for building technologies like new batteries, which will be crucial to electrifying our society. These mining activities, however, might damage deep-sea ecosystems we know very little about. Which is why NGOs such as Greenpeace and even some companies, like BMW, are calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. >click to read<16:14
To fight climate change, should we mine the deep sea?
Ancient rocks lie across vast fields miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Far from people, but not entirely out of reach, they contain metals such as cobalt, used in batteries for technology like electric cars. They are numerous, about the size of meatballs or potatoes, and formed over millions of years. These stones may hold a key to fighting climate change, according to a contingent of entrepreneurs who want to mine them. To wean the world off fossil fuels that worsen global warming, scientists say, will require a lot of batteries. Opponents argue that rushing into deep-sea mining risks destroying a pristine wilderness,,, Skeptics of the industry believe it is better to focus on improving mining conditions on land. >click to read< 17:25
Blue Acceleration: Capitalism’s Growing Assault on the Oceans
“The Blue Acceleration: The Trajectory of Human Expansion into the Ocean,” published in January in the journal One Earth, describes and graphs capital’s growing drive to industrialize the oceans and sea beds. Commercial activity in the oceans is expanding rapidly, and “considerable investments … are driving growth in existing industries and the emergence of new ones, spanning an increasingly diverse range of activities.”,, The authors believe that the blue acceleration marks the beginning of “a new phase in humanity’s relationship with the biosphere, where the ocean is not only crucial for sustaining global development trajectories but is being fundamentally changed in the process.” >click to read< 13:44
The Wild West of Deep-Sea Mining
In the coming years, a new gold rush will begin. Deep beneath the ocean’s waves, from scalding hydrothermal vents to the frigid stretches of the abyssal plain, ocean processes have deposited vast quantities of valuable minerals on the seafloor. Now, the convergence of technological development and political will has placed this ore within reach. But like the gold rushes of old, the deep-sea-mining industry is emerging on the frontiers of society, far from legislatures and law enforcement. Officially, the nascent deep-sea-mining industry is governed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a nongovernmental organization established in 1996 by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The authority’s critical task is to coordinate its 168 member nations in establishing and enforcing regulations for the developing deep-sea-mining industry. click here to read the article 10:24
Do you love your Ocean? Against Ocean Mining? LOST? This Clinton Email should jack ya!
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened in a request forwarded by her son-in-law on behalf of a deep-sea mining firm to meet with her or other State Department officials after one of the firm’s investors asked Chelsea Clinton’s husband for help setting up such contacts, according to the most recently released Clinton emails. The lobbying effort on behalf of Neptune Minerals Inc. came while Clinton was advocating for an Obama administration push to win Senate approval for a sweeping Law of the Sea Treaty. Read the article here 17:21
