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Even with dubious economics, deep sea mining could make sense for China for political reasons. Securing supplies of key industrial commodities under de facto C
by spacebanana7 3y ago
Even with dubious economics, deep sea mining could make sense for China for political reasons.
Securing supplies of key industrial commodities under de facto Chinese sovereignty may be worth the cost of whatever subsidies are required to encourage entrepreneurs & investors.
It’s very hard for anyone, even the US/UN, to sanction Chinese companies that only seek to import ocean materials into the Chinese domestic market.
- paganel 3y agoOf course it’s hard to sanction them, because the environmental-conscious way of extracting lots of minerals out of the Earth is by destroying jungles and other pristine land-based ecosystems, the underwater habitat is where the West draws the line.
- SiempreViernes 3y agoThis is intended as satire, right?
- mint2 3y ago“Oh yeah totally. the west really should be more like the BRIC and draw no lines, lines are bad.” What?!? Must we find any reason possible to knock the west?
- gruez 3y agoThe problem isn't that lines are being drawn. It's that they're being drawn arbitrarily.
- elmomle 3y agoTo rephrase: "We humans have already messed things up badly, why stop now? That would be arbitrary."
- gruez 3y agoI'm not sure how you got the idea that the arbitrariness over when the mining took place. It's pretty obvious from the above comments that the arbitrariness was over which particular method of resource extraction (eg. land mining vs undersea mining) was being sanctioned/condemned, when both are devastating to the local ecology.
- mint2 3y agoThat is wrong. There’s a line and it’s very simple. The line being drawn is “we’ve messed up a bunch of ecosystems over the years mining on land, let’s not make the same mess in this new frontier.” Simple line. Let’s not open yet another ecosystem up to mining. It hasn’t gone well for the others.
- gruez 3y ago>Simple line. Let’s not open yet another ecosystem up to mining. It hasn’t gone well for the others. That would only make sense if we sanctioned every other country for opening/expanding land mines, but that's not a practical proposal. Otherwise the justification seems awfully flimsy and arbitrary. Why is it not okay to disrupt deep sea ecosystems, but it's fine to disrupt land based ecosystems? Is the logic is that because Rhinos (or whatever other land animals) are already endangered, it's fine to drive them further into extinction?
- collegeburner 3y agonitpick, BRICS now that south africa joined. which is frankly baffling given that the other members were only too happy to continue doing business with the apartheid regime, excepting only india: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_sanctions_against_South_Africa.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_sanctions...
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoThere is nothing baffling, it's just politics as usual. The was West was perfectly fine with Apartheid in South Africa when SA was fighting communists in Africa. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan publicly called Nelson Mandela a terrorist. When South Africa wasn't need anymore all of sudden Western countries started to care about Apartheid.
- collegeburner 3y agothe guys i mentioned in my other comment will not be refining in china. too many natsec concerns and there are federal $ to be had if you help secure a durable supply of critical minerals not constrained by an evil empire