The good news: The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) contains more nickel and cobalt than the rest of the world’s land-based reserves combined. It also has significant resources of high-grade lithium, copper and rare earth metals—all of which are critical for the batteries the world needs to meet Paris Agreement targets.

The bad news: The CCZ lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and contains biodiverse ecosystems we know very little about—and that we could profoundly harm if we mine them.

The CCZ lies between Hawaii and Mexico and is about half the size of the continental United States. And it’s just one of many potential deep-sea sources of critical minerals.

So should we mine the deep sea to fight climate change? And if we do, how do we also protect seafloor ecosystems?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Renee Grogan, an expert in deep-sea mining. She is a co-founder and board director at Impossible Metals. 

Together they cover topics like:

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Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

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