“The United States will lead the world in deep sea mineral extraction, and NOAA is the tip of the spear [emphasis added] as we partner with federal agencies and private industry to support the discovery and collection of critical minerals on the sea floor,” said Erik Noble, a Trump appointee acting as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. This particular “spear” will involve, uh, reviewing applications and issuing permits.
Parts of the deep ocean floor contain enormous amounts of minerals like nickel, cobalt, and others; the argument against mining it is that this is one of the last largely undisturbed ecosystems on the planet, and mining activities would likely have impacts that last for years. Trump’s order on deep sea mining ignores the work of the International Seabed Authority, a relatively obscure organization established by the United Nations in the 1990s. Other countries, including China, have held off deep-sea mining as multilateral discussions play out; Trump doesn’t care about such things, and just wants to win something.
“The US authorization… violates international law and harms the overall interests of the international community,” said a Chinese official, according to the BBC. The executive order specifically instructs NOAA to expedite permit reviews; some companies, like The Metals Company, are already in talks with the government to get started, international objections be damned.
Meanwhile, the rest of NOAA is reeling, with a bent-on-destruction Commerce Secretary slowing everything to a crawl. A source at NOAA told Splinter that the research division, known as OAR or NOAA Research, is already down from a pre-administration staff of over 900 to around 700. Reductions in force are still on the way, and the source said it is “very unlikely” that Commerce will even evaluate grants to the “cooperative institutes” that are scattered across the country before a June 30 deadline. Just about everything is on the chopping block, except, apparently, a spear to chuck into the deep ocean.
“This executive order flies in the face of NOAA’s mission,” said Jeff Watters, the non-profit Ocean Conservancy’s vice president for external affairs, in a statement. “NOAA is charged with protecting, not imperiling, the ocean and its economic benefits.”
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