How alarmism on seabed mining helps destroy our planet
By: Konstantin Rovinskiy
Tags: Oceans, Environment, Battery, Metal, Resources

We are living in strange times: on the one hand, the fanciest global trend implies shifting to the ultimately eco-friendly “green” economy where fossil fuels are to be rejected. On the other hand, we keep destroying our planet with the predatory onshore open-pit mining to satisfy the needs of the new “green” economy in the so-called energy metals. Such an ambivalence can be accepted as a sign of a certain psychological immaturity along with some excessive enthusiasm of the current generations with regard to the new socio-economic paradigm where we’d prefer to appear as soon as possible. As any other period of a paradigm shift, the present days provide us with numerous examples of a sorrowful mess in the methods we apply to one or another industry which has to be reshaped by some innovative technologies.

In many cases, we are trying to combine incompatible things when some new civilizational pathos backed by our imagination hurries us up to reach some “noble” objectives regardless of the cost we have to pay for it. We are so eager to exchange our old pollution-generating ICE cars for “clean” electric vehicles to reduce the environmental impact on air. Isn’t that a noble objective? We are struggling against building of the new oil pipelines to make our leaders realize that the coming post-carbon economy should prioritize the renewable sources of energy. Isn’t such an intention commendable? We support our environmental activists in their resistance to the seabed mining which threatens to destroy the ocean biodiversity. Don’t we feel proud of being so ecologically-responsible in this case?

It would be fine unless the reality runs in a complex manner being hardly reformable with straightforward approaches. And a superficial way in which we deal with many problems disables us to see the forest through the trees.

The booming EV industry is one of the most telling examples of how a seemingly apparent impetus can lead to a highly ambivalent results. The roaring commercial success of Tesla Motors made the world automobile industry reconsider fundamental car-production technologies with which every manufacturer should proceed. It was a clear sign of a postcapitalism when quite a voluntaristic ambition of Tesla to supply the notorious Model S created a huge public demand for EVs which, in its turn, encouraged investors throughout the world to fund a battery industry with billions and billions of dollars to keep up with the skyrocketing EV production. This was followed by a common situation for a classic capitalism — the demand for batteries increased a demand for the so-called battery minerals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, and copper. That was the turn of the world mining industry to join the race. And exactly at that moment something went wrong.

Mining corporations decided to go an easy path by intensifying their mining activities everywhere they have battery mineral deposits. Such a solution can be equated with putting new wine into an old wine skin. Because the continental mineral resources have been already explored all over the globe for the most part. And (hand on heart) any mining enterprise can barely increase the supply of cobalt or nickel 10-fold — an approximate increase in demand for battery metals appearing due to the present battery rush. And even in spite of many brave reports from various mining corporations regarding an increase in their production capacity, the gap between the global demand for cobalt, for example, and the supply of this mineral remains too huge to be ignored.

One of the actual indicators of that gap is the market price of battery minerals which keeps growing despite all media efforts to make us sure that no battery metal shortage is available. Everyone who is not alien to common logic can clearly foresee depletion of onshore mineral deposits in a short-term perspective due to the predatory mining we still practice. Even if the world mining industry could satisfy the current industrial needs in battery metals, such a situation wouldn’t last long. The onshore mineral resources are not renewable, and being depleted to zero they cannot create another portion of minerals. Hence, the intensification of the continental mineral mining is just a tactical measure capable of providing the global battery industry with energy metals for 10–15 years from now. What do we do after 2035 then?

Here a dilemma arises: we should either to suspend the “rEVolution” or to find some other sources of battery metals. Since the “go green” movement in a global economy is hardly reversible, the pace we go to a post-carbon world will most probably be kept the same, if not faster. Hence, we need another Earth to extract 10 times more minerals than we have now. Where to find another Earth?

The solution is a lot easier than it seems. Once about 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered with the oceans, we have two more worlds underwater. The worlds that are almost untouched in terms of mineral deposits. According to preliminary estimates, a piece of the ocean floor which area constitutes less than 2% of the entire seabed — the Clarion-Clipperton Zone can provide us with about 130 million tons of cobalt along with about 760 million tons of nickel in the form of the so-called nodules — the potato-sized pieces of the polymetallic ore.

Once again: less than 2% of the ocean floor can provide the entire world battery industry with energy metals for decades, if not centuries.

If we know where to find more than enough battery minerals, what prevents us from starting the seabed mining? It would seem that the biggest challenge of the industrial seabed mining comes to the depths of 3–5 km where the underwater mineral deposits are located. Indeed, the deepwater vehicles capable of working at the pressure of 300–600 bar are more challenging than spacecrafts in some aspects. But the deepwater vehicle technologies are already developed and ready to use. If desired, the world submarine industry can also be involved in the development of the deepwater mineral miners. As one mechanical engineer says, we don’t face any insoluble technical task, but what stops us is unachievable dates. How odd it may sound, the environmental concerns oppose the whole seabed mining industry which, by the way, is the only viable alternative to the predatory onshore mining which, in its turn, keeps destroying our planet.

The fact that only 15% of the ocean floor have been explored and mapped up to these days makes us question the actuality of the anthropogenic impact on the ocean deepwater biodiversity that many alarmistic environmentalists insist on. Where do they get the data regarding the harmful consequences which seabed mining could entail? Is any actual precedent available?

Of course, the environmental activists can create a virtual model of what could happen at some certain seabed area if an industrial seabed mineral mining would start there. It’s a normal practice in the contemporary science especially since the available technologies of computer simulation are advanced enough to build a model of almost any complexity. But such a computer simulation can be scientifically relevant only when all necessary data is available. Even though we can find a sufficient data about biodiversity of some particular seabed area (let’s assume the area belongs to those 15% of the seabed that have been already explored) the other set of critical data for such a simulation remains very questionable. We mean the technology of seabed mining.

On which particular mining technology should environmentalists rely while evaluating the seabed mining impact on the ocean floor’s biosphere? Do we have any standardized technology which can be accepted as a technological benchmark providing us with a general understanding of the effects of the entire seabed mining activity? No analogs from the onshore mining industry are relevant in this case because seabed mining has nothing common with the continental mining in terms of both the applicable machinery and mining methods. Hence, a variety of utterly different seabed mining technologies available now on the internet in purely virtual versions prevents us from making any considerable generalization.

As they say, no smoke without fire: a lack of relevant technical details about one or another seabed mining technology encourages some alarmists to speculate on harmful environmental effects of seabed mining in general. It’s a serious shortcoming of the seabed miners’ community to keep their technologies insufficiently explained to a wide audience. With very few exceptions, almost all websites of seabed mining technology providers represent just a very general info about their technologies with neither drawings of the deepwater vehicles nor the descriptions of their mining tools and methods. However, keeping the details in a secret is explainable from a business perspective — any viable seabed mining technology is a valuable commercial secret in the days when the entire industry is going to emerge. Indeed, confidentiality is about leadership in seabed mining. But it is hardly possible to imagine a seabed mining company which refuses to explain their technology to environmental activists when they appeal to the company for the details. Has anybody heard about such a practice?

Another seemingly crucial aspect of seabed mining relates to the renewability of the oceanic minerals. There are a lot of sufficient arguments for the very process with which the oceans regenerate seabed mineral sediments over time. This complex process which is running in the mineralized near-bottom waters under high pressure is absolutely natural. All statements in favor of the mineral renewability are based on the academic researches whose authors are well-known in a scholarship environment. Nevertheless, some environmentalists remain doubtful about an ability of the oceans to regenerate seabed minerals. Their arguments against it come to a period of several centuries if not millennia necessary to create a thin layer of polymetallic sediments at the ocean floor. Of course, if we take a human lifespan as a benchmark in such a historical process, the seabed mineral renewability is to be equated to zero.

But who says that a period of human life should be taken into consideration in such a process? The very capability of the oceans to regenerate seabed minerals happen over centuries because the relevant natural conditions such as water mineralization, gravity, temperature, and high pressure are always available in the oceans as long as they exist. The process contradicts any typical image of the onshore minerals that can be naturally regenerated under no circumstances. Probably just this cognitive dissonance prevents some mining experts from accepting the renewability of seabed minerals in the same manner as they accept solar and wind as the renewable energy sources whose effects can be experienced here and now.

We have to confess with a heavy heart that our message has fallen on deaf ears. Our core idea is based on the enormous amount of the available oceanic minerals that cannot be utilized by the humankind over centuries — the very centuries that the Earth’s oceans need for regenerating minerals at the seabed areas which should be left idle after a properly arranged partial seabed mining.

Even though we have no rights to speak on behalf of the entire seabed mining industry, the resistance from alarmists that many seabed mining companies face is very indicative. In whose hands do they play in fact? What if the transnational mining behemoths whose profits are at risk due to a possible abundant supply of minerals from the seabed are standing behind those scaremongers whose goal is to suspend seabed mining as long as they can? The alarmistic discourse in media which depicts a horrendous fate of the benthic creatures in case of seabed mining is based on the groundless speculations in most cases.

Alarmism is nothing but a subset of populism, by the way, and everyone who fights against seabed mining on the basis of a shallow amateurish expertise should remember that in doing so s/he indirectly supports the depletion of the onshore natural resources executed through the present predatory open-pit mining. Before laying all the sins (not committed sins, please note) on seabed miners, the ecologically-responsible activists should ask themselves what they actually know about one or another seabed mining technology and how deep their expertise is. Intending to debunk the renewability of the oceanic minerals in terms of a poor feasibility of seabed mining, the respected mining experts should figure out who benefits from the absence of seabed minerals on the global market after all. What could the humane defenders of wild animals feel if the following would be indicated on the batteries of their Teslas: “made with child labor” since about 40 000 Congolese children are still involved in the cobalt extraction in the DRC (and numerous supra-national entities do almost nothing about it).

Without falling into conspiracy, we have to come to a conclusion that something other than environmental concerns along with doubts in seabed mineral renewability is standing behind the alarmistic resistance to seabed mining. To sum up our belief, we could call it the existing status-quo in the world extractive industry.

In other words, the well-established system of the transnational mining corporations extends the moment with seabed mining in order to get all possible profits from their onshore mineral deposits as long as the latter are not depleted completely. Once it implies billions and a billions of dollars, anything goes and everything is used against seabed mining technologies beginning from fake environmental threats and up to a total disregard of the economic advantages of seabed mining in the world mass media.

This is about a global control over material commodities along with their distribution. It seems an industrial seabed mining will appear only after the global mining behemoths start practicing it themselves. And then, undoubtedly, no environmentalistic anti-mining discourse will be present with regard to negative consequences of seabed mining.