时代周刊:散落在太平洋深处的黑矿石--解锁气候密码(8)（在线收听）

“If we started mining over again, knowing what we know now, surely we would carry out extractive industries in parts of the planet where there was least life,” he tells TIME via video call.

"他通过视频电话告诉《时代》周刊：“如果我们重新开始采矿，了解我们现在所知道的情况，我们肯定会选择在地球上生命最少的地方进行采掘业。”

“We wouldn’t go to the rain forest. We would go to the deserts.

“我们不会去雨林。我们会去沙漠。

That’s what we have here in the CCZ: the most desert-like place on the planet.

这就是我们在东太平洋的克拉里昂﹣克利珀顿区的情况：地球上最像沙漠的地方。

It just happens to be covered by 4,000 m of water.

它恰好被4000米的海水覆盖。

Even if seabed mining were able to provide metals in sufficient quantities to feed growing demand for electric vehicles, it’s unlikely that terrestrial mining would come to an end.

即使海底采矿能够提供足够数量的金属来满足日益增长的电动汽车需求，陆地采矿也不可能结束。

If anything, demand for the metals would increase, as manufacturers engineer based on the availability of more plentiful supplies.

如果有的话，对金属的需求也会增加，因为制造商会根据更丰富的供应量来改变制造方案。

Nor would ocean mining necessarily be immune from the oversight problems that plague land extraction.

海洋采矿也不一定能免于困扰陆地开采的监督问题。

Fishing on the high seas, for example, is highly regulated on paper, but enforcement is weak because of the difficulty and high costs of policing nearly 100 million square nautical miles of open ocean, leading to rampant abuse.

例如，公海捕鱼在纸面上受到高度监管，但由于对近1亿平方海里的公海进行监管的难度和成本很高，因此执法不力，导致滥用现象猖獗。

Nor is it certain that cobalt mining will even be all that important in car-battery technology going forward.

也不确定钴矿在未来的汽车电池技术中是否会如此重要。

To start, there are efforts among many battery manufacturers, Tesla among them, to recycle cobalt (among other elements) from spent batteries.

首先，许多电池制造商，包括特斯拉，都在努力回收废电池中的钴（以及其他元素）。

More long-term, manufacturers have already started the shift to alternatives.

更长远的是，制造商已经开始向替代品转变。

Lithium-ironphosphate options—which are jokingly referred to as rust-and-fertilizer batteries in the industry for the everyday ubiquity of their core ingredients— may have a lower energy density than cobalt versions,

磷酸锂铁电池--由于其核心成分在日常中无处不在，在行业中被戏称为生锈和化肥电池--可能比钴电池的能量密度低，

but engineers are willing to work around those limitations in order to reduce their dependence on imports, says Gavin Harper, a battery metals Ph.D. and research fellow at Birmingham University’s Energy Institute.

但工程师们愿意绕过这些限制，以减少对进口的依赖，电池金属学博士、伯明翰大学研究员加文·哈珀说道，他是伯明翰大学能源研究所的电池金属学博士和研究员。

“They won’t give you the extreme performance (of cobalt battery formulations), but they will give you a more than adequate performance that will meet a lot of people’s needs, without the baggage that comes with (cobalt) chemistries.”

“他们不会给你（钴电池配方）的极端性能，但他们会给你一个更充分的性能，将满足很多人的需求，而没有（钴）化学的包袱。”

Many Chinese EV manufacturers have already made the switch, and Tesla announced in September 2020 that the batteries in its Model S will soon be cobalt-free.

许多中国的电动车制造商已经进行了转换，特斯拉在2020年9月宣布，其Model S的电池将很快不含钴。

Even the IEA in its report noted that EV-battery manufacturers are shifting away from cobalt-rich chemistries in favor of those using cheaper, more readily available materials.

甚至国际能源署也在其报告中指出，电动车电池制造商正在放弃富钴化学制品，转而使用那些更便宜、更容易获得的材料。