The International Seabed Authority has exclusive jurisdiction over all of the international ocean bed in the world. The agency was born in part because these nodules that we've been talking about at the bottom of the ocean. Deep sea mining engineering now feasible, they promise a way to meet resource needs for centuries. It's really quite a task, but that's their charge.
The adoption of electric cars has been hailed as an important step in curbing the use of fossil fuels and fighting climate change. There is a snag, however: such vehicles require around six times as many metals as their gasoline-powered counterparts.
A giant storehouse of the necessary resources sits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But retrieving them may, in turn, badly damage the environment.
Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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