Deep Dive: Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company, Electric Vehicle Batteries from Deep Sea Polymetallic Nodules

We're not in a material crisis, we're in an atoms and molecules crisis. Welcome to the age of metals.

Polymetallic nodules sit on the sea floor and accumulate atoms from the Seawater. Every element on the periodic table is in solution in the Ocean. Halfway between Mexico and Hawaii there is a very high concentration of Nickel, Cobalt, Manganese, and Copper which is all of the metals that we need for electric cars. So why are we still strip mining huge areas around the world when we could just be picking up rocks from the bottom of the ocean?

"We go down from a ship on the surface. Then there’s a vehicle on the bottom. We haven’t come up with the word for it yet, it’s not really mining, it’s more like hoovering or vacuuming. We’re not destroying, we’re not fracking, we’re not grinding, we’re just picking rocks up." - Dr. Greg Stone

Listen to this episode for our full interview with Dr. Greg Stone, Chief Ocean Scientist from The Metals Company.

To learn more about the Metals Company click here. To learn more about Dr. Greg Stone Click Here and to listen to his podcast the Sea Has Many Voices click here.

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Transcript

David Evans: 0:25

Welcome to today's deep dive episode. I'm so excited to share this conversation I had with Dr. Greg Stone. He's the chief ocean scientists for the metals company. And the metals company, as you'll soon learn is what might be the future of electric vehicle batteries around the world. Now, Greg Stone is more than just a metals guy. He is a decorated Marine scientist with over 10,000 dives to his name, and he's dope all around the world. He's gone down up to 18,000 feet below the surface has lifted underwater habitats proficient with underwater robotics. You name it, he's done it. He's an author, a National Geographic Explorer, he was a science advisor for oceans for the World Economic Forum. He's created marine protected areas. He's done so many different things. So I'm so excited for him to speak for himself and tell you more about what he's done. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn a little bit more about the future of underwater metals, and about ocean discovery. That's funny. nippy, for me to know, in zoo, to marry a cheap, child away. Why natural? Water are we doing? And how can we do better? Your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water, its use and the organisms that depend on it. For all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? And how can we do better? So welcome to another deep dive episode of the water. We doing Podcast. I'm so excited to be speaking with Dr. Greg Stone. So Greg, do you mind just giving yourself a quick introduction telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do. And I know, seeing a quick introduction might be a lot because you seem to do quite a broad range of things so

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 3:10

I can narrow it down. Yeah, I've been fascinated by the ocean since I was a child. And it came from watching TV, Jacques Cousteau and Lloyd Bridges and things like that. But I didn't have a family. It wasn't interested in it. I just sort of found my way to it. And I decided quite early on I wanted to spend my time underwater. So diving was driving me it was it was it was not science. It was not conservation. It was not anything else. It was diving, I just loved diving, was going to be a commercial diver actually went down that road and looked into it. And then some guy in the industry pulled me aside and he said, Hey, kid, this is not for you. This is basically underwater construction work at the cube got a little more in you than this. I said, Oh, I said, What else can I do? And he said, Well look around. And I looked around and I saw marine marine science. And I said, Oh, okay, I can do that. And it involves diving. So I went into that area. And I started the career and fun fun science man. I was diving in submarines. And I worked for the government, we ran the Alvin. I was in Japan for three years diving the Japanese up so I was living underwater and habitats. I was living the dream. And then about the spring of 1819 90 or so I was diving in the Sea of Japan at 18,000 feet was quite a quite a waist down there takes you three hours of data that depth and I got to the bottom and last thing I expected to see was a trash heap at a place where the light of day hadn't shown for billions of years. And I was I was shocked and I I realized that this wasn't right. And that something had to be done about it. This was before this was before there was any awareness of marine conservation. Okay, this was you got to put your mind back 30 years, right? People were still thinking dilution is the solution and you know, don't worry about it. Yeah. But I I knew that wasn't the case. So I was open then. And about a year later, I got asked to start a marine conservation program in at the New England Aquarium in Boston, which I did. And that's when the cod fisheries were collapsing in the North Atlantic. It was really the blast off point for zoos, the wake up moment. And so I worked there conducting research, I did a PhD in dolphins, they got caught up in fishing nets, I found a way to put acoustic pingers on the net so they could hear the nets and they wouldn't get caught up and did a lot of work on whales and dolphins. That was my first area of expertise. And then I went back to deep sea research and invertebrates and I just started, you know, the people that know the most about the ocean are the people that spend the most time in the ocean and under the ocean, right? It's not the people that study it is people that are in it. I can't ever talk about this kind of stuff without bringing somebody else into the room who's deceased. Now his name is Teddy Tucker, who was a tremendous mentor of mine. He was a Bermudian shipwreck diver. And I met him when I was about 17. You know how sometimes important people in your life if you want to call them mentors, or you want to call them guides or whatever you want to call them, they appear in different forms, and they they're not always recognizable at first. And this guy, he looked like he ran a gas station or something. He had a strong Bermudian accent, he knew more about the ocean than anybody I'd ever met. And he was famous for finding shipwrecks. He found the first intact Spanish galleon in the in the 1950s. So yeah, if you Google his name, Teddy Tucker, Teddy Tucker, that he Tucker and you go back, he's on the cover of Time Magazine, Life magazine was like the guy of the day. And he took me on we got along. And we formed at age old human relationship of mentor mentee system, you know, whatever you want to call it, something other than college, which is a fairly recent way of learning things. You know, colleges are only only been around for a few 100 years. And in all the previous history of humanity, we learned in other ways. And that was mostly contact with people talking with people apprenticing with people. So in a way I apprenticed with him. He also did the same thing with a guy named Peter Benchley who wrote jaws. And Peter and I became Teddy's mentees if you will. And Peter was sort of set up to write novels about the ocean, inspired by Teddy, Teddy was like a Yoda. Think of Yoda. You had that very unusual look about him. And, and then with me, there was science, and ocean. So we all went off our different ways than the three of us formed a team, we always come back together. And Peter came to me one day, he made a lot of money out of jaws. He said, Greg, I'm sick of these documentaries. They're making me do to promote jaws and the girls and bikinis and go into the write all this stuff. He said, I've noticed what you're doing. It's much more interesting, you know, you're out there looking at things, you're creating marine protected areas, you're you're solving problems. He says, What can I do to help? And I said, Well, you can do a lot, I said, you know, your name can carry quite a bit. So we started making films, we made a series of films together, I simultaneously kept doing expeditions for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. And I would always try to do a movie, a popular magazine article and a science paper on a topic. And then I move on to something else because I wanted to communicate, get it out there as far as I could, but also have at the at the basis of a strong backbone of science, a strong backbone of some certainty, because there's so much propaganda and, and speculation and people saying things they think but they don't know around. You've got it, you've got to get something there at the base. So I did that for 10 or 15 years. And then I went into the Pacific Ocean, I'd always wanted to work in the Pacific ever since I was a kid. And I made my way down there. I lived in New Zealand for 10 years. And then somebody asked me to go on an expedition to this group of islands I'd never heard of called the Phoenix Islands. And I said, Well, why are we going there? And they said, Well, they've never been dived, and no one's ever really explored them. And they said, Okay, I'm in.

David Evans: 9:57

Cool.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 9:59

And we it was a four day trip from Fiji. They're they're very isolated. And I fell in the water there and it changed my life. I had never seen a reef like that before. It was a we had been studying reefs with a baseline of a degraded reef. The baseline that we thought was healthy was not healthy. It was a degraded reef and I found on this reef system out in the middle of the Pacific that had never been tampered with, and it was in pristine condition. And we created a marine protected area around it called the Phoenix Islands protected areas, the largest in the world at the time, size of California. And that's when I caught the attention of the bingos, the big international NGOs. And they pursued me for six years, they tried to hire me. And I kept saying no. And then I finally said, yes, because it seemed to line up. And I drank the Kool Aid before, I don't want to audition. Because they, they are a good, they served a very important purpose in society and waking us all up. But I started noticing all this money coming into these organizations of which I was an executive vice president and chief scientist. So I was I was right up at the top. And I could see the money coming in like, so we raised it, and I could see how it was spent. And it was, I didn't think it was spent in the most efficient way. The top priority was to keep the organization going and pay fairly high executive salaries of which I was one of them. And the people that needed the most assistance were in the developing world. And they were not getting the full benefit of this massive campaigns that were being launched to make awareness of it. And it it just didn't make sense to me. So I, I left there, and went on to the World Economic Forum, and I was the science advisor of the UN ocean envoy for a little while. But I quickly realized that they were sort of doing the same thing. You know, just having a meeting. At the end of the meeting, if you schedule a new meeting, that was that was considered successful. There just wasn't really any, you know, action, anything traction, you get you get on. So I met this guy who had, did you know that mining is the worst thing we do on this planet?

David Evans: 12:28

I know that there's definitely some some major issues with different mining practices.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 12:34

I didn't know that until Until recently, that if you look at the biodiversity loss to carbon production, the indigenous community displacements, the people that died doing the activity, it is the worst thing we do. And we know that for certainty, because we have 1000s of years of experience. So this guy came up to me with this idea, I wish I was aware of the polymetallic nodules that have formed on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. I've got one over there. Let's see if I can go get it.

David Evans: 13:07

Yeah, that'd be very cool.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 13:10

Yeah, these these nodules are,

David Evans: 13:14

at this point, Greg actually went off to go and grab one of these nodules. And you can see in the video, this strange nodule metallic looking substance that is straight off the bottom of the ocean floor. I'll let Greg describe it a little bit. But if you want to see the full video of our interview, and this little snippet, that'll be on our public place network video page, where you can see all of the video interviews and all of the video content that we have for this podcast. Now for season two. They were

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 13:42

first found in the 1800s during something called the Challenger expedition, which was the first oceanographic expedition ever. And the British had fitted a gun boat and traveled around the world for two years and to try to find out a little bit about the ocean and they put pull these things up. Can you see it? Yeah, whoa. And they're like a pearl Dave, they they sit on the seafloor, and they they accumulate atoms of what's in the seawater like a pearl does, very slowly. This is probably 10 million years old. Every element on the periodic table that you learned in high school is in the ocean, it's it's in solution in the ocean, in different forms. And these nodules form and they reflect the relative abundances of the elements in the area of which they form. And it turns out in certain places, especially about halfway between Mexico and why there's a very high concentration of nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper, which are all the metals we need for all these electric cars that are coming up you right, which which is a it's between a 600 and 1,000% increase in demand over the next 1020 years. Now, if you go to a terrestrial solution for this, you're looking at 1% grades of nickel laterites. We've already taken all the high grades out pretty quickly and there's zero waste in this this is 100% reusable metal and what's not met Oh is non toxic and perfect additive for cement? There's no way swears, you know, in the traditional mining industry, it's 99% waste. And you end up with these, you have a mountain, you take down and you use 1% of the mountain and the rest of the mountain, you've got to do something like that. It's just, it's, it's just horrible. And we we offshore these activities to developing countries, because, you know, we don't want to have them in California here. So why not put them down in some place in Africa or Indonesia, we're not going to see it. And there's very little oversight. So this was a solution. And you can find enough of these things and an area less than 1% of the bottom of the sea floor to supply the humanity for hundreds of years.

David Evans: 16:07

Until really, they're that that plentiful.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 16:10

Yeah. It's like cobblestones, I can show you pictures, what they look, wow. They're very, very dense. And we can get these into a closed loop material. We're in a material crisis, that this guy got a Nobel award for the chemistry a few months ago. And he said, This is not a question about supply shortages here. And there. He said, This is a question about lack of atoms and molecules of everything. He says, we're running out of everything. And we've got to really rethink how we're going to do this. So this technique allows you to project a period of extraction, which would be 20 3040 years and then a period where you can close the loop because you can't destroy an atom. Atoms are perfectly recyclable, especially battery metals and battery metals. And other metals are absolutely essential for the new renewable energy future, we must we must embrace. Otherwise, we're doomed, right? This to me seemed like the most tangible, nitty gritty hands on thing I could get involved with to stop this direction we're headed in, you know, I was in Paris as a science advisement that climate summit. You know, we haven't we haven't, we haven't stopped since then we're still increasing our co2 emissions. And a guy did a paper the other day, and he said, If we continue to do that, it's going to be 150 degrees on this planet about 200 years. I mean, and you look around you, there's these monster tornados in Kentucky, there's no lobsters left in Cape Cod, the Gulf Stream slowing down. upwelling is beginning to stop, the planet is coming and done in terms of us things that we liked, the it'll always be here, they'll always be life, they'll always be things going on. But in terms of the kind of environment that we enjoy as people, and we have occupied this planet, now, it's no longer Earth, like it was 300 years ago, now it's a new earth, people or something, give it a new name. This guy came up with my book launch, when I published my book solvency in the age of the algorithm. And he had researched me, she chased me down and he said, he wanted to pursue this industry. It's regulated by the UN. It's been in development for 30 years, it's got a regulatory, it's got everything you want. It's even got a system for sharing resources with poor people. There's an off take the top of the structure that goes into a pool, that is then redistributed to try to ease away at this north south divide, it's not going to solve it, but it's one way to begin to get at it. And I knew he was going to take help from the environmental community. Because it says it's, it's, it's called,

David Evans: 19:01

as you're saying, mining is a hard sell. And it it has it has quite the reputation. Yeah, it sounds like it's quite different than an open pit. Mine typically would be. I mean, we were not unfamiliar to that up here in Canada as well. But what are the main things that the environmental movement, I guess, is pointing to with this? And how, how do you address it? Well,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 19:22

first thing I had to do was he asked me to join the company and help because he knew he was going to need somebody like me to give him cover, because I had a reputation. And people knew that I was a conservationist and, and all that. So I said, I said, okay, and he said, You got to keep in mind, this is a one way street for you. And I said, you have to keep in mind that if I find someone I like I'm gonna leave and that's not gonna. That's not going to be very good for you. Yeah. And he said, if you find something, you know, like, I'll be right behind you. So I felt like I was with the right people. And I gave a speech in Abu Dhabi three years ago at the economist ocean Summit, where it was the first time scientists like me, someone who has some credibility in the environmental community stood up and said, you know, we must do this, you know, and all my colleagues were all saying, no, no, no, don't do it. Can't do it. Can't do it. They weren't I found any alternatives, it would just say, Don't do that, you know? And that's not acceptable. You can't say no, without saying do this instead. Because if you just keep saying no, you don't go anywhere, and boy, were they mad at me. I mean, I've got every day that I've got every award, they give for diving and conservation over there, I can't even keep them on the shelf, there's so many of them. And over the years, so, so I had the credibility to take this position. And I don't know what's wrong with them. They're, they're just, they're just, they're just blind to a planetary perspective, you've got to have a planetary perspective, you can't look at square meter of seafloor and say, if you pick this nodule up, you're going to kill these three worms, therefore don't do it. You know, that's, that's just not the way it works. Everything we do has an impact. So we're at a point now where we need to find out what what are the least impacts for the way forward and take those. And this to me clearly, is that we're still getting held. We had Greenpeace out 1000 miles offshore, this site, by the ways in international waters 1000 miles offshore, and Greenpeace was out there spray painting or boat or research boat, this wasn't even a commercial, really, we're out there doing research trying to do the environmental impact assessment about whether or not this can be done. We still haven't decided whether we're going to do it. We're doing the research to and I used to work with Greenpeace, I use the Rainbow Warrior early in my career. David, one of the founders, I dated the gal that named the Rainbow Warrior. I mean, I know how I know their culture. And I said to him, I said, God, don't you guys have something better to do? You're out here trying to stop something that's good. Go take your boat and run it back and forth in front of the Mississippi River and draw people's attention to reactive nitrogen and phosphorus is pouring out of that every day, and killing the ocean. And I gave him about five or six other things that are unattended. Instead, they're off trying to stop something unneeded should be done. Because it's flashy. And it gives, right. Anyway, it's so I spent the last couple of years I didn't think I'd have to do it. But I've been back into publishing papers, science papers about this, trying to explain it in science terms. And I just hope that we get over this knot, and we can disrupt the mining industry in this direction, because if we do I think back of the envelope calculation, it's about 30 to 40% of what needs to be done on this planet. Now, as soon as possible if we have any slim chance of getting out of this mess we're in. And this is a substantial solution. And it's being held up by the environmental community.

David Evans: 23:07

Do you think it's being held up primarily because it's a new industry, and it's so flashy, or because people hear mining and they, they just assumed that we don't know enough about the oceans yet to be able to do this. With knowing the impacts.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 23:24

I mean, backing up a little bit, they do have cause to have concern, because in the past, industry has lied to us. They've said, Hey, don't worry about we'll take care of it, and they didn't. But what these folks don't realize is that since that time, there's some sociological psychological science around the fact that our frameworks and our minds, the way we look at the world is about 30 years behind science and reality. Right? They're looking at this through like 1970s 1980s thinking. And since then we've got the Law of the Sea, we got the Convention on Biological Diversity, we've got a whole bunch of very strong treaties that have come into place. There's science that says, This is not as bad as we think. And they're not taking that into account. They're imagining it's 1970. And this company is just rising up out of nowhere going to destroy the world. You know, right. That's kind of their perspective. But I think we're at a turning point, and we will be able to do this and then I can move on. I mean, this isn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I did this really because I wanted to give this industry a chance to get going exactly. I realized if I sort of laid my body across it, you know that it might have it might have a chance I did was able to recruit colleagues to join me they're not as high profile as I am. But people like you know, Jared Diamond is I've heard the name yet. Yeah, germs and steel. He's a brilliant anthropologist, good friend of mine. He's outraged at what these groups are doing and he's gonna write an essay soon and and there's a bunch of others that feel the same way. It is the right path. The arguments are just right. I had an interesting experience. Last week I had a phone call from a student I get a lot of phone calls from students who want advice about their careers. I was taking If I can, because I figure that's part of my, my job as a, as a, as a senior member of this discipline. So she said to me, Dr. Stone, the reason I call is I want to find out how you got from where you were to where you are now. And I said, Okay, so I told her the story. And she said, Well, I agree with you, you know, she said, I think these are the solution. And I don't understand why the environmental community so worked up about it. And I said, Well, there you have it. I said, By the way, where are you from? And she said, I'm from Scripps. And I said, Scripps, and who's your advisor? She told me and her advisors, one of the major critics of this. And she said, she said, I feel like I'm in a madhouse down here. You know, these people? Are, they're making decisions based on getting money,

David Evans: 26:12

based on Yeah, based on money and fear. And yeah,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 26:16

yeah, yeah, they're just, they're just not thinking clearly, I

David Evans: 26:19

guess to give the listeners a bit of a an idea or a picture of how this actually works. So these nodules are sitting on the bottom, it's not like you're going to the bottom and mining a big pit or a hole down there something so I assume it's robotics, or could you just paint a picture of what this actually looks like,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 26:38

I can do better than that, I can show you a very short film that shows the whole thing and 60s Perfect. We go down with a there's a ship on the surface. And then there's a vehicle on the bottom that we haven't come up with the word, it's not really mining, it's like hoovering, or vacuuming or something like that. We're not destroying, we're not cracking, we're not grinding or anything, we're just picking rocks up, and then they get pulled up to the surface, and then they get taken to land. And then they get processed, and we've got a zero carbon budget, and we've got zero wastes, you could put this next to a nursery school, it wouldn't matter. The processing of these nodules is so but it's a very simple process. And it is worth seeing.

David Evans: 27:23

At this point, we watched the metals company video on their actual production system, and how they actually are mining or hoovering up these nodules from the ocean floor, to watch it yourself,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 27:35

go to the metals company, and it's the head video, it should come up first, and you just hit play, that tells the whole story there in like 90 seconds,

David Evans: 27:45

I would definitely say to go check out this video, it really illustrates what this whole mining process would look like. And even gets an idea of all of these nodules that are just sitting on the ocean floor that we can use. So go check it out of the metals company website, there'll be a link in the show notes as well.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 28:02

But that's pretty much what it looks like down there. You can see out really that many? Yeah, it's considered a fairly deposit area of the seafloor. There's not a lot of big animals down there. Although the critics claim that there's all these important microbes, we've had the opportunity to work with the engineers, as they're designing it and optimizing it for what we want

David Evans: 28:26

is very, very interesting. What is the energy source to power all of this? Is it primarily wind, renewable,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 28:35

we had originally thought that we had to have it near a hydro dam or a nuclear plant or something like that. But then we realized that as long as you're able to pump renewable energy into the grid somewhere else, right, to account for what we use for okay, that freed up our location

David Evans: 28:51

search. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 28:54

simple. And it makes sense. And the other thing is the timeframe, you know, all these electric cars that are coming out are coming out like tomorrow, and a terrestrial mind takes 10 to 15 years from conception to production. So we're gonna miss it. We could produce these metals next year.

David Evans: 29:10

Wow. That's how quickly you could scale up. Yep.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 29:14

Yep. So this is a solution, the real nitty gritty solution. We're not just sitting and talking to meetings and speculating and stuff like that. What's the solution?

David Evans: 29:24

Yeah, I got the idea that you're you're a man of action and not a man to just sit around and then not move forward?

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 29:31

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I like to sleep well at night.

David Evans: 29:39

So I'm curious nodules, are they mostly the size the one that you have in your hand? Or, or do they get quite large, this

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 29:45

is a bit of a larger one. Actually, this size we will leave behind by design, because this is a place that animals can recolonize on there were some obligate animals that need nodules to live on. So we're at 15%, behind the ones that we want them we're like the size.

David Evans: 30:02

In the recording, you can see that Greg den holds up a nodule that is just a little bit smaller than a ping pong ball. So that's the size that they're hoping to collect. Oh,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 30:12

we are in the age of metals. David, the age of oil is passed. And now we're in the age of metals because with metals array Interesting to put in the right systems, we can have a renewable energy system. That's a closed loop in terms of material with, you know, no fossil fuels and all that. So metals is what it's all about.

David Evans: 30:32

Yeah. And I mean, it's definitely something that I've heard more and more about knowing where the metals that power or cellphone come from, or what goes into your electric vehicle and the talk about batteries. In my mind, it kind of comes down to a number of years ago, when, what was the movie that blood diamond and things like that, and, and how they're similar? Very similar. Exactly, exactly. But people fantasize about diamonds and not necessarily about manganese. And in copper,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 31:04

this is just to the north south divide I was talking about earlier, right? The people that are against this are sitting in offices, much like you and I are, you know, we have metal all around us, we have a metal car outside. Metal is not just about batteries, inspect cars, it's about bridges, it's about buildings. And fully half the world is not developed yet, right. And we have people sitting in these nice offices at Stanford, and Scripps, and they're very comfortable in their lives. And they say, Oh, why change anything, don't do that. That sounds bad like that. They don't think about the global equity that we must change, sort of to combat that or deal with that. I've come to the realization that it's about education. And it's about pulling people from developing countries, bringing them up here to North America or Europe, putting them through school at very importantly, at the undergraduate level, not the graduate level, but the undergraduate level. So they can can understand how we think and how we look at money. And it gets very different the way they what they do. And I think that will help equip them to engage in and hopefully sort this out. Because until we take care of the fellow humans on this planet, things will not work. Did you know there are 2 billion people on the planet that cannot afford a bicycle. Wow. Yeah. And if they had a bicycle, that would change their lives, they could get their meager products to market faster, and maybe $5 extra a month. And if they made$5 extra month, they can save up for school supplies for their kid, and they can take their kid to school on a bicycle. It's transformative. There's a famous explanation of what the washing machine did for women. It completely liberalized them. And we just we ignore it, because it's so it's so convenient to ignore what's happened to most of the humanity or half of humanity. Because those of us that are lucky enough to be on this side of the curve, you know, why worry. And I was flying from I took a helicopter ride from San Diego to LAX a couple months ago. And that was riding right along the coastline. I was just looking at all the houses. And it was obscene the way it was, there was houses built, you know, 1234 up the hillside, and each house had a swimming pool, each house had an SUV, this each outside of that. And there's no way this planet can supply that kind of lifestyle for everybody. But that is what people look at and say that's what we want. So I'm beginning to think that we need to re envision cities probably along the coastline, big big apartment complexes that are safe, that are pleasant and concentrate people in those places, and then leave open areas around them where we can have crops growing, we can have some wildlife experiences and and begin to engineer this planet for 10 billion people. Because right now, we're not doing that we're just haphazardly going forward at the whim of people's needs, people's desires. And those of us in the developed world are running the show. So I've been and I don't know what caused the north south divide. I wish I did. I've thought about it a lot. I wrote about it in my book, my last book a little bit. No, no one knows. Some people say it's a Catholic church. Some people say Jared Diamond argues guns, germs and steel. It had to do with those that have the steel and the germs and the guns first. But there was a time in history where a divide was created. And we had these two worlds. The reason it's called the north south divide is the prime minister of Germany in 1980s, was looking at a globe in his office and he was noticing that most of the countries south of the equator were undeveloped, and most of the countries north of the equator were developed. And he called it the Brandt line. His name was Brandt. And that didn't last long. It turned over to the north south divide, but it's essentially a very, very steep inequity between societies. And I don't know what to do about that, then the climate crisis is accelerating much faster than we thought. Right. And I can attest to that firsthand. I've been out looking myself diving and I went to the Galapagos Islands a few months ago for National Geographic is one of their guests scientists on one of their Lindblad trips, and, and I dive there a lot. And I was I was kind of on vacation, really. But I switched on my my science brain. And I started looking around and I said, Something's not right. The Galapagos is where we have the most upwelling anywhere in the world. That's what drives the ocean is bringing this nutrient cold, deep sea to, and I saw skinny seals, you don't see skinny seals and like Guapa silence, you know, you can see the bones on their back, you know, there's, you see the vertebra sticking out. In the fish biomass was way low, and lobsters are gone from Cape Cod now, and the Gulf Stream is slowing down and the whole thermo hay line circulation system is beginning to halt. Or I do think that we're on the verge of collapse, a climate collapse. And I think that might follow up civilization collapse in the next couple of 100 years, unless we have some technological advances, which we could some extraordinary things that we could do pumping gases up into the upper atmosphere, for example, that might cool the planet down, there are things that we could do that I hope we can do them. But the moment the best we can do is just keep going to these treaty meetings and pushing solutions like this and doing everything that we can. And we should be talking about it every day, from morning till night. You know, my parents were both in World War Two. And they told me that during World War Two was an existential threat to the world. And as a result, everybody was focused on it, hyper focused on it. And that's all we talked about for four years was the war. And we want it and put that to bed. Well, this, this, this thread is about 1000 times worse. And we're not talking about it. You know, it's something that we should talk about. And, and I have a belief that if we talk about it enough, it'll happen. So that's why I like podcasts like yours, in anything that will raise people's awareness of this stuff.

David Evans: 37:49

Yeah, that's exactly what I love being able to speak with people such as yourself, who are clearly very knowledgeable about these things. And I get to learn and share this with others as well. What would be the number one thing that you would like listeners to this podcast to take away or to take into their own life moving forward?

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 38:09

Yeah, that's a tough one. I get that question asked a lot. When I give talks and stuff, everybody always says at the end of the talk, they raise their hand, they say, Well, what can I do? You know, I recycled plastic and I have electric car. And is that enough? And I always say, No, it's nowhere near enough. You've got to do a lot more. And you can't do it all either. I said, think about the Earth as a sick relative. And it's dying. It's having a real hard time. And the things that you can do are like bringing in a cup of hot tea to the to your sick relative by these laudable minor adjustments. I said, you need to hire a doctor who knows how to fix this. The Stockholm center for resilience is one that I like a lot. And there's any number of groups around look at them carefully, though, make sure they're not phonies. In their greenwashing. I started something called pole to pole conservation. Right? Yes, we need to talk about that stuff. And what I did is a I rethought the whole paradigm of how things are set up. And I realized that we needed to devolve from large fingers to small, nimble, integrated entities within society that ultimately would seamlessly become a big part of society. This should be not something special, it should be just who we are. It should be built into the fabric of how we operate. And I'm writing an essay on that right now that's going to be part of our annual report. So finding the right organizations to support you can never go wrong by influencing politicians. If you can, they will listen to you. And if there's a piece of public policy that will help write a letter and tell the guy to support it, but in terms of your own personal life, focus on the big things that are in your life, heating your house, driving your car, the amount of travel you do with carbon released in airplanes, don't focus on the small stuff, you know, recycling plastic bags, it's not going to save the world. It makes people feel good, but it's not going to save the world. That's my advice is to be scared. I'm terrified. Be scared. but optimistic and keep learning, keep listening, keep listening to your podcast and let that lead to another podcast. And there's got to be a tipping point that when we talk about it, and enough, we will all come to the same awareness. And that will then I think, transform how we do things. Because right now we're not there. And then there's so many rich people in the world, so many Uber wealthy people in the world that deny climate change, they deny all this stuff. Because if they didn't deny it, how can they live with themselves with all that money? You know, right? If I had money, a lot of money, I don't, I would pump it into the developing world in a constructive way. You can't just give them money, a lot of waste, you got to channel it through systems. Right now I'm working on COVID Relief Fund for some developing countries in South Pacific. And we're sending it through the Ministry of Health, making sure people, it's used properly, we have to send resources to these countries, because they don't have enough to have a look some day at the mean life expectancy of countries around the world. That's a real eye opener, when I first started working in Carabosse, this country that I've done quite a bit of work. And the mean life expectancy was 46. I think, wow, oh, gosh, I started noticing it. I would come back after a trip. And I'd say, Hey, where's Johnny, you know, and they go, Oh, John, Oh, Johnny died. And then they go on to the next thing. Wait a minute, what did you say Johnny died? And they say, yeah, what happened to him? And they said, Oh, Johnny, I don't know, what was it with Johnny? Maybe it was a heart attack or diabetes? I can't remember. They're so accepting of it and used to it, you know, right. That it's, it's, it's, it's, it's sad. But it's an indicator, our expected life expectancy keeps going up. I think the developed world is now 76 or 80, something like that. Care abouts gone up to they're up to 55. Now, but that's a real telltale sign of conditions, because the reason it slow is they don't get regular health checks. They don't have hospitals that are adequate. And that's a humanitarian problem. I don't know why the world ended up the way it did. It should have Why didn't Why didn't and then an end up with equal development all around, you know, right. It's just like, why did we end up with this big divide?

David Evans: 42:47

Absolutely perplexing, because it doesn't seem to be rooted in anything obvious at all?

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 42:53

Well, yeah, I wrote about it a little bit. In my book, I argued that countries with with maritime capability early got an advantage. And then Vantage has not been reset that could be wrong. Other people have argued the Catholic Church has been a big inhibitor of growth in especially South America. There's a lot of theories about it. But it makes no sense that the United States is the way it is. And then you go one foot over a border, and you're in a completely different universe, you know, Canada and America, we've sort of, we're sort of the same thing. You know, we're same culture, same economic system. I don't know. There's a gal that I met you might want to try to get, I can introduce you to her. Her name is Aurora, and she was a mid level auditor at the UN 35 years old. And she noticed that the UN had this enormous foreign aid budget that was mostly being spent for internal un offices and executive salaries and stuff. So she ran for Secretary General, it turns out, you can run for Secretary General, there's nothing to stop you from doing it. Well, no one had ever done that before, though, because it's sort of run like the old Soviet Union. You have one person who's the Secretary General. And then he figures out who the next Secretary General is going to be. And she tried to disrupt that she got on the ballot, and New York Times wrote her up New Yorker wrote her up, and they decided to cancel the elections that year. But her agenda was simple. And I liked it. She said to me, Greg, the agenda should be everybody in the world has access to education, and everybody in the world has access to the internet. And with those two things, that has a chance of balancing things out, because you can do business now on the internet, you know, if you're in a remote area, and this this meta, what's it called the meta

David Evans: 44:48

know something? Yeah, the new Facebook thing, right?

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 44:51

I don't know if it's Facebook, but it's a world that you live in, and you can conduct business in it and do things, right. That's a business you could start on an atoll out in the middle of nowhere, you know? So that's a good agenda, education and internet for everybody. It's simple. You can get you can get your arms around it. So there's a lot of things out there and I'm glad that you're concerned. You're aware you're a smart guy.

David Evans: 45:18

Just trying Just trying to soak up as much as I can from credible individuals such as yourself.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 45:24

What motivated you? Did you? Were your parents very moral people or

David Evans: 45:30

did Yeah, I think my parents were very moral people and very much supported me to follow where my curiosities led, and where my passions lead. I've been a very, very fortunate to have had the past experiences that I've had and been able to work in an industry to be involved with projects where I get to ask questions and be involved in the decision making process, but also get to learn more about our natural environment, and be able to ask questions that we as a population want to know about how our environment is doing. I've been fortunate enough to have that support to be able to do this. And I've been blown away with the reception to providing a podcast ID I have to say what it was, I was very nervous at the beginning. And I still get nervous as well and just cold call emailing people, and then speaking with him about topics that I am not very familiar with myself. But I think it's by pushing yourself and expanding and going into places where you're not necessarily comfortable in asking questions where you don't know the answers and are open to learning. That's where you can show that it's okay to ask questions, and it's okay to not know and to learn. And by sharing that experience with others, I think it's a more genuine experience for a listener and, and for people who want to learn as well. It's more open and inviting, and to show that it's okay not to know and it's okay to learn.

Unknown: 46:56

Is your business model working.

David Evans: 47:00

My business model with the podcast? Yeah, I mean, I'm not from the revenue point of view, my whole goal was not to turn this into a business, if it eventually did have support, then that would be phenomenal. But for me, this is about me learning and about me being able to start sharing what I'm learning and being able to reach an audience that does not necessarily know about these different issues and to help spread the word. And I think to a certain degree, I see this as the next step within my role within science. As someone who has a basic foundation in some concepts within science, it can be quite daunting to those who don't have that background to even know where to begin with asking questions. And I think we should all be trying to expand the world of everyone else, and be able to have these discussions and to spread this knowledge around. And for me, it's just been a pleasure, just learning. And I've been having so much fun learning the backside of the podcast and the organization of it and getting to speak with individuals, such as yourself, it affords me that opportunity, which is a wonderful for myself, and just even hearing from some of the listeners, and I'm sure you also have a podcast, which I was going to ask you about as well. But for me, at least hearing back from some of the listeners who I haven't met, or people that I I've known from many years ago that have been going through hard times and hearing how much that they've gained from the podcast. And with me not even being aware that they're listening, and how how much they've they've been taking from it, it's it's been a very, very enriching experience. And I'm excited to see where it continues to grow to

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 48:39

what kind of what kind of audience you have.

David Evans: 48:42

Primarily it's the demographic is typically between 20 and 40. And typically, it's individuals that most do have a bit of a scientific background. But my idea is to try to target those who don't have a scientific background, or don't have post secondary education, and how to distill these concepts down to bite sized understandings. And then, if people are interested in then they can listen to the entire conversations with the experts as well to expand their knowledge on that and see where it goes from there.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 49:14

Great. Well, I like you and keep doing what you're doing. You can count on me for future interactions. Should you need it.

David Evans: 49:22

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah. Do you have anywhere where you would like listeners to learn more about the metals company? Or do your podcasts? Would you like to put in a little promotion there for any event?

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 49:34

Oh, thank you. I'd be happy to tell people about this foundation that I've co founded called pole to pole conservation. Great.

David Evans: 49:43

Yes,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 49:43

it's a different kind of thing. It's small. We don't have money, you know, pay executive salaries, most of the leadership volunteers. We do pay people. In other words, our overhead is very low. The money that you put in here goes to the problem. And we're sending kids to college, which I think is one of the most significant things you can do. We're also working on naturally heat resistant corals, which I think could be the future of coral reefs in the world. And then we're engaging in opportunities that come along with the sea is significant. It's a new way of doing business in the NGO world. It's not the bingo, we're nimble, we're small, we're smart,

David Evans: 50:26

we're results driven,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 50:28

we will make the most out of contributions that people make, you can be rest assured of that I think our overhead is probably going to be around less than 5%. And that's just paying like accountants and stuff like that. That's something I'd like to pass on. I'd like to pass on for people to be open minded, they're going to hear a lot of propaganda, but deep sea mining, and it is propaganda, and have them dig in and read and learn themselves and make a decision. And don't just listen to what people are telling, because there are people, I don't know why they do it. But they are protecting their careers or their previous statements or whatever. They're not thinking globally, they're not thinking about us, they're not thinking about you, they're thinking about themselves. They don't have the awareness where they should be. Those are the main things is please learn. And this is one very timely issue which we could use your help on, and that your helped me Don't sign moratoriums, they've set up a moratorium regime, which is designed to kill the industry, they will tell you that, but that's what it's designed to do. They say, oh, you should wait 10 years and then learn more about the ocean and then do this. And well, anybody in their right mind knows that in 10 years, there's not going to be any investors. And the world will have gone on to another solution, which is like digging up half of Indonesia. And they're not they're not honest about that. I'm very disappointed in their their ethics. That's what I'd like the listeners to be aware of, and have them think a lot about people in the world that we share on this little teeny planet. If you look at those pictures from outerspace man that that atmosphere is razor thin, and we have completely polluted it. And we've got to stop. It's out of control. So the it's optimistic, but it's urgent. People don't often don't know what to do, though, I know that. So if they don't know what to do, if they have resources, find a group that's good, and give them some money, so that they can operate, if they can actually take actions in their lives, do that. But do something everybody needs to do something doesn't have to be climate, everybody should follow their passion. If hunger is what it is do hunger, it's women's rights to women's rights, whatever it is, do something every day, and the world will change. Don't be passive.

David Evans: 53:00

I couldn't have said it better myself. That is quite the statement to leave on. Greg, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for speaking with me that I've learned so much. And this has been such an enriching conversation. Yeah,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 53:14

I've enjoyed it today. But I really have.

David Evans: 53:22

Thank you so much for listening to today's deep dive episode with Dr. Greg Stone, where we talked all about exploring the ocean, finding out what's deep down there, how to solve the north south divide, and all about polymetallic nodules and how we can use them for electric vehicle batteries. Thank you so much to Dr. Greg Stone for speaking with us for the podcast. It was a fantastic conversation. I'm so excited to see what happens with the metals company. And when we can start actually putting these polymetallic nodules into electric vehicle batteries and into vehicles. You can learn more about the metals company and Dr. Greg stone@metals.co. They've got some great video content where you can really visualize what we've been talking about, of these polymetallic nodules in the bottom of the ocean and hoovering them up to be able to bring them to the surface and then take them into vehicles and make a closed loop system. Take a look. It'll make a lot more sense there. Dr. Greg Stone also has a podcast. So if you like this, check his out. It's called The C has many voices and can be found on Google, Apple, podcast, Spotify, you name it, it's everywhere. Be sure to check it out. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I just like to thank the rest of the team, specifically Paul Polman, Lee Burton, and the rest of the aquatic biosphere board. Thanks for all of your help. And to learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and what we're doing right here in Alberta telling the story of water, you can check us out at aquatic biosphere.ca. And we also have launched our new media company, ABN aquatic biosphere network, which you can find that the public place dot online and search for the aquatic biosphere network channel where we will actually be posting all of the video episodes that we're going to be creating this year. So tune in. They will be out for the next little while but very excited to start sharing video content as well of our interview Make sure you're subscribed because the next topic that we're diving into is medicine from the sea, the ocean as our future pharmacy, what we can learn from the ocean creatures and how we can use them for modern medicine. You will want to miss it. If you have any questions or comments about the show, we'd love to hear them. Email us at conservation at aquatic biosphere.org. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Leave us a review. It really helps us out. Thanks and it's been a splash