The world needs more battery metals. Time to mine the seabed

livemint.com:

Indonesia, the country that dominates nickel supply and holds a fifth of all reserves. If all those reserves were mined, at least 10m tonnes of living organisms would be destroyed (as in the CCZ, mostly species unknown to science). The associated emissions would also be ten times higher.

Several ISA members have called for a “precautionary pause", claiming that too little is known about the impacts of CCZ mining. This logic is backwards. Too much is known about the vital need for nickel, and the environmental destruction that is wrought by obtaining it on land, for anything other than cautious but expedited action to be a sensible path.

Battery technologies that use less nickel—or even none at all—may in time reduce the need for it, but on current trends vast amounts are called for. Member states should therefore seek to finalise the rules as soon as possible, and then to monitor the impact on the CCZ and surrounding ocean as mining takes place. The reward is a cooler planet that hosts a greater abundance of life.

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