I mean, maybe the studies from the test patch saying that sea floor mining could damage the ecosystem for thousands of years might have been an indication that we probably shouldn’t do it?

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Please someone stop Gerard Barron before he kills us all. From reuters:

“What are the alternatives if we don’t go to the ocean for these metals? The only alternative is more land mining and more pushing into sensitive ecosystems, including rainforests,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of Vancouver-based The Metals Co, the most-vocal deep-sea mining company and one of 31 companies to which the ISA has granted permits to explore for - but not yet commercially produce - deep-sea minerals.

Other companies with exploration permits include Russia’s JSC Yuzhmorgeologiya, Blue Minerals Jamaica, China Minmetals, and Kiribati’s Marawa Research and Exploration. Their potential future activities are seen as augmenting mining on land.

To give a better answer to his seemingly rhetorical question: The alternative is to ramp up salt-water battery tech, look for other tech and NOT deprive our biosphere of oxygen.

More on the mining stuff from wired and forbes (forbes link paywalls itself after a short while).