Of course it’s hard to sanction them, because the environmental-conscious way of extracting lots of minerals out of the Earth is by destroying jungles and other pristine land-based ecosystems, the underwater habitat is where the West draws the line.
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?