The Dubious Economics of Deep-Sea Mining
nautil.us
nautil.us
Deep sea mining rigs don't really manipulate the nodules so much as hoover them up - there wouldn't be as much backlash if it was just picking nodules up.
There's a picture of an early rig here: https://blogs.noc.ac.uk/jc241-smartex/prologue-smartex
personally hoping to start a robotic deep sea exploration crew in my retirement years...
That means there's hardly any penalty or price for polluting and destroying sensitive ecosystems. And since companies treat fines like operational costs, these companies will be financially incentivized to mine, pollute, and destroy the seabed, even for questionable gains.
And say there will be some organizations bothering and protesting, they will be disregarded as "green climate weirdo's" by populist right-wing governments in the West.
I also lived near the Alabama gulf coast and had friends that lived on the coast. Those globs of oil washed up on shore for a long time, years if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if there was any good research done to see if the environmental impact was better or worse but it would be interesting to see how it would have compared.
The PR value was huge though. Its amazing how quickly the popular sentiment can chill out when the problem is no longer easily visible.
I'm not sure it will be 'hidden' (the research projects are not going away) so much as yet another case of competing interests within governments, where the environment gets sidelined for the sake of an hypothetical future magic money tree.
problem is, you'll never make these people happy. o&g? emits carbon, must go. cobalt for batteries? tears up the congolese landscape, must go. seabed recovery? messes with ecosystem, must go.
to be clear, i'm not trying to preclude cleaner alternatives. just saying there seems to be a rising idea that basically no level of anthropocene change is acceptable and we must retvrn to communes and mud huts or something. some folks need to quit letting the perfect be the enemy of the good
even if you agree with the almost inevitable conclusion that we should simply use less, you must recognize the political reality that almost no one is willing to suffer a substantial downgrade in standard of living. increased buy-in to the energy transition is largely due to promises that we can continue living how we are, tolerating what impact is left and mitigating costs with a combination of technological innovation and making "the rich" pay
“Downgrade” is an understatement, people always idealize living “in the field” until they need an emergency surgery, then all of the sudden the cheap availability of plastics is great.
It is challenging, yet I can't see a compelling tech demo or explanation of why it nailed tech breakthroughs. There is not yet a shale oil moment.
Looking at The Metals' top staff is also not encouraging: https://metals.co/company/ Most executives are not related to underlying tech. Most are not related to their hardest problem. Even the CTO has experience just with pure software plays. I found just one person who previously did some novel underwater robots as a principal. It is not professional due diligence, but it does not sound like a solid plan.
I'm not sure why there is so much discussion about the environment, given that tech is not ready. Maybe after raising a lot of money, it's easier to blame regulations than admit challenges with execution?
Securing supplies of key industrial commodities under de facto Chinese sovereignty may be worth the cost of whatever subsidies are required to encourage entrepreneurs & investors.
It’s very hard for anyone, even the US/UN, to sanction Chinese companies that only seek to import ocean materials into the Chinese domestic market.
What?!? Must we find any reason possible to knock the west?
The line being drawn is “we’ve messed up a bunch of ecosystems over the years mining on land, let’s not make the same mess in this new frontier.”
Simple line. Let’s not open yet another ecosystem up to mining. It hasn’t gone well for the others.
That would only make sense if we sanctioned every other country for opening/expanding land mines, but that's not a practical proposal. Otherwise the justification seems awfully flimsy and arbitrary. Why is it not okay to disrupt deep sea ecosystems, but it's fine to disrupt land based ecosystems? Is the logic is that because Rhinos (or whatever other land animals) are already endangered, it's fine to drive them further into extinction?
I would like to know how bad mining that area is compared that to the damage we will do continuing with internal combustion engines if we don't solve the climate issue, or mining the same things on land. To me it seems we're entering a time when no choice is a nice one.
If someone came and said that they want to drag mine/open pit mine the Yellowstone geysers bc of how rich they are with minerals and said as an argument "hey it is just a small part of the park!" I don't believe that many people would be inclined to accept that "argument"....
The areas with nodules containing the the right stuff is very small from my memory - haven't got a reference.
So is the damage going to spread wider than that area? I can see why people want to study it. I just don't reject the idea as I think the climate situation is a lot more critical than people like to imagine and we should have options.
That's an extremely difficult challenge and one that paints us into a corner. The underlying problem is that energy use and GDP are directly correlated, and modern economics don't allow for a possibility of decreasing GDP. As long as we refuse to change that assumption we're left only with a future of using more energy from a different source.
I don't really think its a meaningful difference long term where we cause the environmental damage. If we really want to make a change we collectively need to embrace a future where energy isn't limitless and growth isn't the goal in and of itself.
Also you cannot make people who are poor not want to better their lives even if it costs in the long term. How would you force them? They are going to try one way or another and all we can do is find a better way.
There's plenty of power use that isn't necessary and could be cut with little or no meaningful impact. More so for the poor, they likely aren't part of the wasted power consumption that would even be the low hanging fruit.
In the US particularly, we seem to strive to build large single family homes. Those are a massive waste of resources, from the materials to build and maintain the structure to the power it takes to run the home. We don't have to travel nearly as much as we chose to. We don't need LLMs, technology with 2-3 year lifespans, or "fast fashion" cloths that fall apart in a season. We don't need vacations that include flying to some far away place, cruise boats, or roller coasters.
Sure there are sacrifices in giving up any of these, but any risk of deaths would be second or third order effects related to economic impact. There's just so many things we could easily give up if we cared to without risking serious impacts before we have to worry about risking leaving the poor behind or directly requiring deaths in some way.
Our choices are shaped by the available options people have, sometime very little choices at all.
Given that some countries are richer or poorer than other, and some countries are better at public transits than other, I find it hard to believe that the status quo can be justified by people merely making 'choices'.
Buying a large house is a 'choice' in the sense that much of middle housing is illegal and that political structures aren't designed to maximize the efficient use of land.
There's a reason why Georgism is in vogue these days.
buying lots of clothes is a choice.
Ah, yes. Powered by a system that is designed to exploit brains for profit. It's like eating junk food is a choice. Or not exercising is a 'choice'.
They are useless excuses that justify the status quo rather than empowering us to do something about it.
I hope I'm just misreading sarcasm there, but they are very much choices and that itself should be empowering because people can just as easily make a different choice.
If choice is so easy, anyone can pick up a textbook about mathematics, barring deficiency in cognitive capacity, become knowledgeable about mathematics. That doesn't happen not because people are stupid, but because the task is genuinely hard.
If choice is so easy, you would be able to able to choose to not to eat for three days and achieve that. For some people, it is extremely difficult. For others, that is easy. I have experienced both situations.
Real freedom, then, is to understand that your own mind has their own cause and effect and how to manipulate that to achieve 'freedom of choice', and the corresponding training to be able to do so.
To have whole societies exercising, then, is to understand the causal factors involved and the knobs needed to achieve that, and the organizational capacity to do so.
That is why to say that you 'have a choice' to not exercise or exercise is a defeatist attitude and to consign whole group of people to early death. What people need is not 'choices' but solutions to achieve those choices.
I myself continue to struggle. I have lost weight and then regained. There are time in which I can exercise for hours. There are times in which I achieved physical fitness that I at time I never thought I could. I will keep trying, but clearly I do not yet have mastery of my own mind.
You're conflating choice with a much more complex situation that raises questions of how people learn, how skills relate to nature versus nurture, and personal interest and motivations. I'm not arguing that avoiding junk food or choosing to exercise are easy, only that they are choices.
Its really interesting to me that you take the view of choice as defeatist while I see the exact opposite, that the view of a lack of choice is defeatist. We both clearly have considered this in the past and feel strongly about our view, great reminder that people can seriously and genuinely consider the same situation and land on exactly opposite positions.
A society can't become healthier, even if they are willing, unless they understood the steps they need to take to become healthier.
Choice are meaningless if you can't do them, which is why they are traps.
There are absolutely situations where economics or geographic limitations leave some with little choice beyond junk food. Beyond that, eating junk food is a choice. The beauty of choice is that we are offered the freedom to make it. Maybe you never want to eat junk food, or only occasionally, or maybe you really enjoy it and prefer to live on a junk food diet. Its a choice, and one that can be made today and changed tomorrow.
Viewing things like exercise and diet as a non choice is insanely dis-empowering. I want to know that I can choose to change if its important to me, I don't want to feel powerless to genetics or the society in which I was born.
It's not that I think people are destined to eat junk food, it's that describing what you eat as a choice is shallow and useless.
A choice is only meaningful if you are able to implement it. Only with knowledge, training, and technology can you overcome the deficit. Combining that by changing the structure and incentives of society will amplify that effect.
If people are continuously trying and failing to implement exercise and weight loss programs, it suggests that our knowledge and tools are incomplete. If we reach the point that obesity and 'lifestyle' related issues are a non-problem or can be overcome successfully long term, only then it becomes a meaningful choice.
This is why I emphasized knowledge and skills, cause and effect over freedom of choices. Obesity is not just a problem on an individual level, but also on a societal level. If you want to solve them, you must manipulate all the levels of causality.
If you want to believe that humans are just misled in a way that is fine, but you might find that some of your ideas about the status quo turn out to be wrong or at least that the status quo has few thousand years in it you need to overcome.
Middle housing is a type of housing density that sits somewhere between high rises and single family housing. Vox media has a good article on it.[1]
but you might find that some of your ideas about the status quo turn out to be wrong or at least that the status quo has few thousand years in it you need to overcome.
Modern status quo is vastly different to how urban planning was done in the past. Maybe they have a good reason, or maybe not, or maybe they were a good idea for a time but became obsolete.
1. https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/8/17/22628750/how-the-us-mad...
For sure urban planning has changed all a lot in the last 2000 years, but I actually meant more human desires around "luxuries".
My point is only that we as individuals could give up quite a few things that would collectively make a good dent in lowering energy use without ruining society, well-being, etc.
All of civilization has basically been about allowing higher per capita energy usage. To say "just use less power" means going to a lower level of human development.
If our goal is human flourishing, then our focus should be on enabling yet higher levels of energy usage per person, preferably with as few side-effects as possible. Fossil fuels have been (and will continue to be for a while) the least-evil source of energy for humanity. I look towards a future powered by nuclear and renewables with better energy storage technology, perhaps even to a degree where energy is effectively limitless.
Your view, I'm afraid, is incompatible with continued human flourishing.
This sounds like an assumption without obvious proof.
Of course. If you ever drove downtown during rush hours, it is a miserable experience.
If you want to see people riding bike, see youtube videos about Finland. If you have the right clothes, or the right infrastructure and support, a lot of things are suddenly possible and easy.
But of course, noticed that I said reduction of cars, not a total elimination of cars.
We do not need a car for any and all activity. There will be a time and place when you need to haul large amount of materials, for example.
Vehicles are also expensive and can be stressful to maintain and pay for. Choosing to remove a cat from your life and finding a way to make that work can be a net positive long term. Obviously that wouldn't work for everyone, but if it works for some then we have to accept that more cars don't always equal higher standard of living.
we can and should use our limited hydrocarbons to bootstrap our way to higher-potential energy sources. but "using less" is a misguided assumption
Walking is also good, and it would probably do us good to personally increase humans' basal metabolism.
Changing society is hard isn't an excuse to continue the status quo, nor some edge case you envisioned is an excuse to not encourage walking, cycling, or public transit whenever possible.
It's not automatically true that having cars increase the quality of life.
Sure some of our daily tasks would be easier, but we simply don't want to own or maintain a tractor and appreciate a hard day's work.
I can say first hand that my quality of life is greater by skipping the diesel-powered tool that most would consider a must, and I'm well aware that most in my position would consider having the tractor as a quality of life improvement. Neither view is wrong, they just require more context and a recognition that quality of life is relative.
First, you're assuming that our current use of power is efficient and there isn't enough unnecessary or inefficient use of power to make a difference. Do you believe that there aren't changes we could make to reduce power use without noticeably reducing human well-being?
Second, you're assuming that increased growth is always a good thing and developing more stuff by using more power is always an improvement. There are changes that consume more power without making a clear improvement to human flourishing, and worse there is progress that consumes more power while actually making our lives worse.
Why do you believe that power consumption can't be reduced without meaningfully reducing human well-being or happiness?
Walking would improve the lifestyle of the ~1% of humans that live in developed countries and press keys for a living. Everybody else would like to sit in a car every now and then.
That conscious privation in the face of abundance is good for you in certain cases does not mean that as a matter of public policy, we should strive for privation instead of abundance.
the above does not exclude a reduction in our hyperconsumerist tendencies. i live in a pretty minimalist fashion and 90% of what i own was passed down from relatives or picked up secondhand. i am somewhat baffled that more people don't do this, if for no other reason than cost savings
We have very good reason to reduce environmental pollution now, because pollution literally kill people, and not some obscure species that only a few people are aware of.
I personally prefer that we mine asteroids...
I doubt this.
Can someone please prove me wrong?
What metal(s) have we mined in the past that we no longer need? I'm looking for any metal that we used to use that now we no longer use because we do not need it with our ever-expanding population and industrial base.
I'm not referring to metals like lead and mercury that are limited in use due to their toxicity.