Euroviews. Norway's latest plan for Arctic deep sea mining will inevitably sink

Industrialising the ocean floor in the middle of a climate crisis is not only reckless, it’s cruel. 

Last week, the Norwegian Parliament took it a step further and voted in favour of deep-sea mining in the Arctic. 

Again, a country that presents itself on the world stage as progressive and an environmental champion is serving dark and receding plans for the future of the planet. 

If governments are serious about tackling the environmental crisis, we need so much more than empty words undone by terrible plans.

Both the deep ocean and the Arctic are among the world’s last untouched frontiers. Home to incredible wildlife, the fragile ecosystems on the top of the world are also critical in the fight against climate catastrophe. 

What Norwegian representatives have just done in approving plans to develop an industry that we don’t need threatens to disrupt ecosystems that we need the most.

Deep sea miners have been going one further than even the greenwash of oil companies' carbon offsetting ads — not just using nature to try and justify plans to burn yet more fossil fuels, but using the green transition as the entire justification for ocean destruction. 

Through this heady PR spin, the industry accepts the inevitable environmental harm deep sea mining would cause — it was getting harder to shout over the hundreds of scientists warning of the risks and Sir David Attenborough calling it a "tragedy" after all — but claims the extinction of marine life is a necessary sacrifice we must make to mine metals for batteries in electric vehicles. 

This twisted logic shows the political consensus that tackling climate change now has, but belies a hard truth that the climate movement must be more alert to what kind of energy transition is rolled