Inside the Race to Mine $92 Billion Worth of Deep Sea Minerals | WSJ

Rare-Earth prices are in the doldrums. China wants to keep them that way: on.wsj.com/3AiRwyU

Those black pebbles 5:05 are the life essentials for the local ecosystem. They react with the ocean water to produce oxygen. The mining companies are going to simply vacuum the ocean floor clean of this rocks to make EVs! This is like a massive deforestation underwater. Human have already exploit/used about half of earth land surface that can be cultivated for food. Natural forest and wild habitat land are disappearing because we are using those land to grow food. We have the engineering might to just wipe every other living things on earth quite rapidly. Leaders need to have the wisdom to stop this madness before it is too late.

This is one of these ideas that we will regret as humanity in the future

Yeah, so... recent scientific study concluded those very rare earth minerals (and whatever else they're attached to) plays a significant role in oxygenating the ocean, ergo mine those and we could see a massive die off. Of course deep see mining companies are disputing that cause money. Wonder which side wins?

Norway is perhaps the largest oil revenue nation in the world outside of the Middle East on a per capita basis. So they're not about to suddenly become friends of the environment today.

Norwegian here, from Bergen, as shown in the video. We've been lucky with resources, but there's little public discussion of the environmental downsides here. I don't quite understand that because it is obvious that mining would destroy these ecosystems. The permits mentioned by the state secretary are also for research and exploration - so this is a dangerous game they're playing. Apart from that, manganese crust and nodules have been the next big thing in resources for over five decades. It's like fusion energy - hugely promising, hugely difficult to do, with a potentially life destroying downside on the other end.

For a second, I was anticipating Platinum after that one time in History, Spain dumped all their Platinum in the Ocean thinking it was worthless.

“irreparable damage”, meaning damage so massive it can not be repaired. Leave those minerals and their surrounding ecosystems alone. Find a way to recycle the minerals we already have.

A shame there’s not a race to study the unexplored ecosystems at the bottom of the ocean. Not much money in that though I suppose.

Mining is anyway not green. Whether we get it from land or sea there'll be an environmental impact.

Dark oxygen discovery might affect deep sea mining

Impressive race for minerals, keep it sustainable! 🌎

Absolutely should not be doing this. This is the very bottom of the food chain, which is about to be decimated. The effects won't be seen for years, but will absolutely not be reversible

We must allow deep sea mining for the future generations

The race to strip mine the ocean floor into lifeless empty scars is my first guess. With slow 10000 year recoveries vice how a forested area might slowly recover. Sure, a few small cuts would not be that bad, but we both know what happens when 'industrial scale' is applied.

New ways to destroy the blue commons

Great video!!

I got to know many things, so thank you WSJ.

Remember that discovering new resource doesnt mean cease land mining, its both and will always both

There’s a lot of other places where the aquatic animals can move to.