OPINION: Humankind having done their damnedest to destroy the habitat of wildlife on the ground (mainly forests), is now planning to do the same thing on the ocean floor where there are wild species that we haven’t even discovered yet. Humankind is going to destroy that part of nature that we are yet to discover and understand. If deep-sea mining occurs and it occurs on a widespread basis, we are going to be destroying nature that we never discovered or knew, which I think takes the biscuit.
The idea of deep-sea mining has been scorned by one of the world’s most renowned experts, Silvia Earle, 88, an American who leads the field of conservation in terms of experience in this area with other respected experts such as to David Attenborough and Dame Jane Goodall.
She says that putting unique creatures on the sea bed at risk was “absurd”. And she described it as one of the “stupidest ideas”. Great Britain opposes deep-sea mining but the Metals Company of Canada, hopes to start commercial mining in the Pacific Ocean in 2024 or the following year.
The company argues that doing so would protect habitats on land because there is surging demand for precious metals such as cobalt, nickel and so on which are vital for technologies such as electric vehicle batteries. Norway, The Times reports is the “first nation to approve commercial deep-sea mining”. Norway is one of the happiest countries in the world. I hope they are happy about destroying the ocean floor.
Silvia Earle told The Times’s podcast, Planet Hope that the project was misguided. She added that:
“This is wrong on a scale that is unprecedented. We are talking about systems that are not just thousands of years in the making or hundreds of thousands of years; were talking about millions of years invested. The deeper we go, the less we know, but the more new discoveries we are finding.”
The area of the sea targeted by the Metals Company lies between Hawaii and Mexico and it is known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. It is an area where more than 5,000 species call it their home and many are found nowhere else on the planet.
Earle also criticises the idea of mining the seabed to protect habitats above ground because “Two wrongs don’t make a right. We are presuming that it’s okay to go to the deep sea and start bulldozing the ocean floor, disrupting not just the ocean floor, but the water column above. It’s one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever imagined.”
Comment: mining the ocean floor is just another nail in the coffin of planet Earth as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think this company is going to mine the ocean floor to protect habitat above; they simply want to explore new areas where they can exploit the planet. Perhaps I’m being cynical but I feel that I am being entirely correct.
The planet has changed enormously in terms of the natural world over the last 50 years. The whole planet is changing unfavourably before our eyes and it’s all because of human activity. There is no indication that it will be abating any time soon.
The only glimmer of optimism in the long-distance future is that the experts have said that humankind’s population numbers in developing countries will start declining eventually after levelling off but by then who knows what kind of damage will have been incurred through the exploitation of this precious blue planet, a jewel in the dark universe by then.
