As the race to extract more and more from the earth to manufacture more and more electronics and other technologies grows, so to do the potential harms of this quest for resources. Our insatiable desire for the latest phones, electric vehicles and all the other things we deem necessities for modern life require batteries and other components made of minerals that require extraction and processing.
The surface of our planet is already being exploited for these materials, so companies are moving to the deep sea. It was thought that this type of mining hadn’t really started. But nope, it has. And as companies begin to dig up the seafloor, they seem to be racing past, or just ignoring the ramifications of such extraction, not just to the ocean and the life within in, but the impacts to local communities, regulations and long-term implications.
Willem Marx, author of a new article in Scientific American titled "Suddenly Miners Are Tearing Up the Seafloor for Critical Metals," shares more on the controversial subject.
