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Sea multimeal nodules, containing the deposits of nickel, manganese and cobalt minerals, collected from the seabed.
Corbis through Getty Images
InHis first 100 days as presidentDonald Trump’s executive commands did not cause any end of conflict and concern. One of his last, aimed at encouraging and possibly mining valuable minerals by marine shepherds, puts the administration on a course of conflict with both environmentalists and other nations worrying about the dangers of aquatic life.
Trump April 24 It calls on “American domination of offshore critical mineral resources”, not only in the country’s territorial waters, but “beyond national jurisdiction”. The order calls on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to create a process for issuing licenses to companies and the supervision of a plan to map sea shots where the concentration of valuable materials is likely to be the largest.
Scientists and private companies have studied the ability to harvest small nodules that resemble nodules that are deep under the surface on the ocean floor because they contain high -value minerals, including manganese, nickel, copper, zinc and cobalt used in batteries. No company is mined today, but the newly formed companies such as the metal company say they are ready to. Most coastal nations joined the 1990s International Seaber in the 1990s to find out whether and how this could happen, but the US is not part of this team.
The problem is that the nodules, formed for millions of years, have put undisturbed, serving as a home for sensitive forms of aquatic life. Their removal will destroy this unique environment and possibly create sediments that are widely harmful to sea life.
“Scientists agree that deep water extraction is a deeply dangerous effort for our ocean and all of us dependent on it,” said Jeff Watters, vice president with Ocean Conservancy. “The areas of US marine water, where test mining was carried out 50 years ago, have not yet been fully recovered. The damage caused by deep water extraction is not limited to the ocean floor: it will affect the entire water column from top to bottom and all.”
And they are not just environmentalists who do not like Trump’s order. “Violates international law and hurts the overall interests of the international community” said Guo JiakunRepresentative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.
Trump’s obsession with critical minerals is not new and the boost of the seabed is a piece of stabilizing it in Greenland and Canada as additional suppliers of these resources. Meanwhile, many companies of newly established businesses and materials believe that recycling, exploitation of existing resources and developing alternative materials are a faster, less controversial alternative to scraping the sea floor.
The great reading
The only American Mine of Rare Land can earn large from Trump’s China invoices
Trevor Paulhus for Forbes
Since China has excluded President Trump’s invoices, limiting the exports of rare earths – vital to the manufacture of magnets that go to electric motors used for cars, electronics, robots and wind turbines despair for new suppliers.
“The feeling of urgency, I have never seen something like that,” he said Tower. “It’s quite wild and exciting – and discouraging.”
Litinsky manages the unique US Rare Earths mine, Mountain Pass in the Mojave Desert of California, providing elements such as Neodymium and PraseodyMium that industries such as defense, automaker and electronics are based on building effective electric motors. As soon as Litinsky staff with more than 800 engineers, technicians and miners harvest minerals from the Earth, their MP improves, turning them into metals, which companies such as General Motors need EV engines. Starting this year, the MP will also make high -power magnets with these metals at a new factory in Texas, a market dominated by China.
Ninety percent of all rare earth metals are processed in China. The country produces almost 95% of all rare magnets-resulting in their power and long-term preservation of magnetic properties-and virtually all the 7,000 tonnes that US imports came from China-a clear vulnerability to the supplies of US companies. As Trump’s invoice war escalated, China on April 4 announced that it is limiting the exports of “heavy” rare earths, closing the imports of magnets made with them.
“The problem for almost every industry using an engine that requires magnets is that China has this huge strategic Flex in minerals rarely,” said a member of the US -based board that requested not to be named publicly. “Things China only put export controls are a big deal. We will not be able to make the engines anymore or whatever a rotating magnet in it.” Game ”.
Read more here
Hot topic
Gill Pratt, head scientist and chief executive of Toyota of the Toyota Research Institute, about the restriction of CO2 in the Trump era
Medianews Group via Getty Images
One of the things you see is effective strategies to reduce car carbon emissions. How has this effort been affected by the change in US administration?
The answer, amazingly, is not at all. And the reason is that we look at the timetable of climate change and the timing of the carbon that remains in the atmosphere. The political cycle, the swing for the pending front and rear, occurs in a very short time compared to the evolution of these things.
Climate change has been going on for decades and is going to continue. The slope of the curve has been accelerated. It is in this kind of rapid inclination now, and it remains the same. We believe it is important to mitigate clean CO2 emissions or somehow other mitigations if we are going to have any hope of reducing climate change. The laws of physics do not care what we believe. They don’t care about politics. They don’t care what we want. It’s what it is. We have learned that every time nature teaches us a lesson.
Our goal remains to be neutral carbon by 2050. That’s what we always said. The question is what is the best way to influence it?
The answer is not to make pious to think of customers after the government’s decrees to act in some way. This is because we know customers, at worst, they face it, but they usually go their own way. If we push too hard and no matter who it does, the result will be people will hold on to older cars that will emit much more than if they were given the option to improve by reducing CO2 emissions with a newer car that will have both lower CO2 efficiency, perhaps not as much as EV. And the car will be safer as well.
There are many reasons not to try to drive the target too much and not artificially limit the choice of customers.
On the other hand, we have to work as hard as we can, something we do, to reduce the carbon emissions of every type of engine we have. In this way, we really allow the system to do what it is to do, but trying to make the result as best as possible.
What else do we read
Trump’s administration terminated the foreign ministry officials who are responsible for US climate policy and climate strengthening as part of the reorganization of the country’s diplomatic catering. Career officials had played a leading role in US negotiations under the UN Convention on Climate Change (Reuters;
More connectivity of the electricity grid in the western US could overload pure energy. Best coordination between states could save the region up to $ 3.25 billion per year in the cost of the energy system (UC San Diego Study;
Tesla’s fastest growing business is to be screwed by invoices. “Rapidly evolving commercial policy” could weigh upon request for the company’s energy storage products (Heat map;
US duties set 3,521% in solar imports from four Southeast Asian countriesdelivering a victory for domestic manufacturers while stepping up the heads that already threaten the country’s renewable energy (Parachute;
Al Gore real -time climate data just became live. Here is because it matters (Tower;
The government’s chemical disaster monitoring tool was just dark. The chemical lobby demanded Trump to make the positions of high -risk chemical plants secrets. EPA did just that (The lever;
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