An interestingly difficult argument to make about mineral availability and the circular economy

We are told that there’s really no need to go deep sea mining because there’re plenty of minerals around without doing that:

Electrification of vehicle fleets is a “positive pathway” to reduce carbon emissions, says McCauley. But he accuses deep-sea mining companies of a “false narrative” that we must mine the ocean to meet renewable energy’s demand for metals.

We have an interesting example in the same newspaper on the same day. There’s vast amounts of lithium in the geothermal waters underneath the Salton Sea:

But as disastrous as the disappearing Salton Sea is, powerful people believe that a vast reserve of lithium locked beneath it and the surrounding area holds the key to flipping the region’s fortunes.

The Salton Sea thing is true by the way, just as there’s lithium underneath Cornwall, the Krusny Hory and many other places. For the same reason that we’d no go deep sea mining for that particular element, it’s soluble. We can, in fact, extract it from seawater itself even if that’s currently rather expensive -as might be that extraction from geothermal waters, something that remains to be found out.

But d’ye see the logical problem here? If it’s true that there are those vast resources meaning that we don’t have to go deep sea mining then what’s the argument that we must have a circular economy because of the lack of available resources? Why do we have to recycle everything if there’s plenty of it?

It’s difficult to argue both at the same time, there’s plenty but there isn’t. Still, no doubt some will still try to insist on both at the same time. Sadly, many of those some seem to be the people making policy.