“All singing this sad refrain
We’ll never get off this runaway train”
(Eliza Gilkyson, Runaway Train, 2008)
I recalled, here, the successful 1995 Greenpeace campaign to stop Shell from dumping Brent Spar, a redundant North See oil installation, in the Atlantic Ocean. I suggested that one of the lessons from that campaign, that end-of-life disposal needs to be thought through before embarking on a new energy project, was being ignored in the current promotion of ‘green’ energy. There’s certainly some magical thinking about improving the feasibility of recycling solar panels . But little attention is being given to the waste that will inevitably be generated.
Another lesson that should have been learnt from the Brent Spar campaign was that the ocean bed deserves to be protected as a rich ecosystem, not trashed as a wasteland. Back in 1995, even marine ecologists opposed to the deep sea dumping of Brent Spar seemed more concerned about its possible impact on the fishing industry than about how species which remain on or close to the sea bed might be affected.
“Some of the biology in the environmental assessment was very far-fetched and shoddy…To state that deeper-water fish living below 1500 metres are relatively isolated from those above, and to imply some sort of boundary at 1500 metres , is very misleading… I saw a brotulid, which normally lives below 1500 metres, on sale in the fish market in Lochinver only this May”
(John Gordon, Scottish Association for Marine Science, New Scientist 26 Aug 1995)
The International Seabed Authority is meeting in Kingston, Jamaica this July. It aims to agree a code to regulate mining of the seabed. An increasing number of member countries are calling for a moratorium, but many, including the UK, seem keen to give the go-ahead to mining. Which sounds suspiciously that, as with Brent Spar, the UK government continues to dismiss the ecological value of an undisturbed sea bed.
Mining for a ‘green’ transition
Demand for the the critical materials that are needed for EV batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines, in the quantities that would be required for full decarbonisation by mid-century, would be huge. If high-income countries continue with their growth obsession, this demand will far exceed known supplies. Prices will inevitably rise, boosting incentives to seek out and exploit new sources of supply, but the time lags before extraction and production can take place at the required scale are considerable. It would be highly unlikely that supply could catch up with demand.
“Replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines, will not be possible for the global population in just a few decades. There is just not the time, nor resources to do this.”
(Simon Michaux, Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels, GTK 2021)
Whether or not critical materials can be supplied at the pace and the scale that would be required to decarbonise while continuing to pursue economic growth, there will be enormous pressure to seek alternative sources of supply. For an industry that has exploitation of virgin territory in its DNA, the ocean bed is particularly inviting. Mining companies are especially excited by the presence of polymetallic nodules, containing many of the metals and minerals required by EV batteries and other ‘green’ technologies, on the Pacific ocean bed. And they are being egged on in last week’s typically gung-ho Economist leader, headlined: “The world needs more battery metals. Time to mine the seabed.”
Mining the sea bed to save the rainforest?
Mining companies claim that mining the ocean bed will be less environmentally damaging than mining on land. Suggesting that deep sea mining will protect Congolese rainforest is a powerful sales pitch, but total greenwashing. Demand for critical materials is such that deep sea extraction sites would be added to land-based sites, not replace them.
The claim that deep-sea mining would be less environmentally damaging than mining in tropical rainforest is disingenuous. Both destroy valuable habitats. And with deep-sea mining, it is hitherto untouched sources of biodiversity that are threatened. Recent estimates suggest there are more than 6,000 different species, nine tenths of them previously unknown to science, inhabiting the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area of the Pacific sea bed that is particularly rich in minerals needed by ‘green’ technology.
“The digging and gauging of the ocean floor by machines can alter or destroy deep-sea habitats. This leads to the loss of species, many of which are found nowhere else, and the fragmentation or loss of ecosystem structure and function. It is the most direct damage caused by deep-sea mining and the damage caused is most likely permanent. Deep-sea mining will stir up fine sediments on the sea, creating plumes suspended particles ….. such plumes could smother animals, harm filter-feeding species, and block animals’ visual communication”
(Deep-sea mining, IUCN Issues Brief, 2022)
Regulation to limit the damage?
The draft regulations currently being considered in Jamaica emphasise that exploitation of the sea bed should be “for the benefit of mankind as a whole’. Lip service is paid to the need for activities to be conducted “in accordance with sound principles of conservation’, and to protect “biological diversity and ecological integrity’. But the main focus is on securing “increased availability of minerals derived from the Area as needed in conjunction with minerals derived from other sources, to ensure supplies to consumers of such minerals.”
The only limits on development that are mentioned in these draft regulations are the need to protect developing countries “from serious adverse effects on their economies or on their export earnings resulting from a reduction in the price of an affected Mineral or in the volume of exports of that Mineral” (so much for deep-sea exploitation saving the rainforest), and for serious harm to marine environments and coasts that are “under the jurisdiction or sovereignty of a coastal State” to be avoided.
Some countries are arguing that development should be paused until there is clearer evidence that deep sea mining can be carried out without damaging the marine environment. To placate them, it seems likely that a compromise will be offered, perhaps to establish exclusion zones close to coastlines, but to allow mining elsewhere. If so, as with Shell’s disposal plans for Brent Spar three decades ago, damage would be allowed so long as it took place far offshore. And this unique opportunity for countries to unite in protecting important ecosystems before development took place would have been lost.
The alternative - degrowth
What is unquestioned in official net zero policy debates is a perceived need to maintain economic growth in high-income countries. This attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable leads inexorably to a scramble for access to new sources of critical materials. It’s a scramble that will most likely risk intensified geopolitical conflict, and one that cannot succeed if economic growth continues to boost demand.
This does not mean that we should retain fossil fuels. They must remain in the ground if runaway climate change is to be avoided. The only possible way out requires re-orienting economic systems away from economic growth and towards meeting basic needs while remaining within planetary boundaries - the goal explored in Kate Raworth’s 2017 book Doughnut Economics.
“Relying on technological change is not enough, in and of itself, to solve the ecological crisis… high-income countries need to abandon growth as an objective and actively scale down less necessary forms of production, to reduce excess energy and material use directly.”
(Jason Hickel, On Technology and Degrowth, Monthly Review Jul 2023)
Such a re-orientation will be needed not just to limit climate damage, but to protect endangered ecosystems and biodiversity. Humanity, too, would benefit from a fairer distribution of the limited resources available to it.
This might not be enough to avoid catastrophic collapse, but it might at least provide a breathing space within which humans had enough time to focus their attention on where, and how, to go from there.