Mine the Moon to Save the Seafloor!

            Welcome back, readers! What a relief it is writing during these cloudy, rainy days. There is magic in the sound of raindrops on rooftops, in the scent of parched earth now quenched. It’s enough to soothe a troubled mind and soften a strained soul.

            I came across an interesting proposition in an article that I wanted to share with you all: to save the deep ocean, we should mine the moon (https://nautil.us/to-save-the-deep-ocean-we-should-mine-the-moon-238541/).

            I know I sound crazy. Moon bats, am I right? “We can’t mine the moon! What a logistical nightmare!” Space is scary. It’s dangerous. It is only just now beginning to be ‘managed’ under complex international law that is still being written. Why mess with space?

            Well, it all comes down to rare earth elements, minerals, and metals necessary for the widespread decarbonization and electrification of our economy. As some readers have noted, cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo are widely exploited, subjected to human rights abuses like lack of food and water. And worse. Our hunger for personal vehicles, first gas-powered, now electric, continues to ravage poorer countries in the southern hemisphere. To some, the answer to these humanitarian violations is to mine a massive swath of Pacific Ocean seafloor between Hawaii and Mexico for minerals and metals (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02242-y). No one lives at the bottom of the ocean, right?

            Well, certainly no humans live at the bottom of the ocean. And certainly, to decarbonize we will need copious amounts of copper, cobalt, manganese, and nickel ore. But mining the ocean floor presents nearly as many logistical problems as moon mining does, and at the detriment of a delicate ecosystem that contains a myriad of sea creatures. These animals possess value simply by existing, but if one were to take an anthropocentric approach also may possess medicinal and therapeutic properties that could be beneficial to humans. The long-term and widespread impacts of mining roughly two miles beneath the ocean’s surface are not well-understood. Indeed, we haven’t even classified everything that lives down there. Just as drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge would result in catastrophic loss of irreplaceable, charismatic Arctic megafauna, drilling the seafloor for metals and minerals will result in catastrophic loss of ocean life, both known and as-yet undiscovered.

            Here’s where we circle back around to the moon. The moon is the result of a cataclysmic collision between proto-Earth and a Mars-sized planet called Theia. This caused the two molten planetoids to merge while ejecting a spinning mass of material that would then become our moon (https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-did-the-moon-form.html). Although the moon lacks an atmosphere and is geologically dead, devoid of weather, meteoric impact protection, plate tectonics, and volcanoes, it consists of materials we can find on Earth, like iron, titanium, aluminum, and magnesium. The lunar surface consists primarily of anorthosite and basalt, two common, well-studied igneous rocks. It follows that other concentrations of ore may be present in the formerly molten remains of the moon.

            Both seafloor and lunar mining require the use of robotics and communications. It’s not feasible for humans to undertake such environmentally dangerous labor, and it would be better performed by rovers and automated machinery. We already possess the hardware. Even the “software” of artificial intelligence is making strides toward being capable of conducting an autonomous mining operation or similar project. I think colonizing Mars is a waste of time and resources, but mining the lifeless moon, our closest neighbor, might be worth it.

If we can spare the ocean floor, we must. It is critical. We must protect the final bastion of unspoiled habitat. It will be comparably difficult to mine the moon as opposed to the seafloor, and it will be much simpler to mine the moon as compared to an asteroid or meteorite. The moon has a solid, predictable orbit that stabilizes our axial wobble and we’ve already demonstrated that we can put people on the surface and bring them back home safely.

In all honesty, we probably won’t invest in lunar mining just like we won’t invest in the genetics needed to bring back the caribou and wolves when they’ve gone extinct. RIP, Pacific Ocean.