NOAA ruled The Metals Company's seabed application fully compliant under the Hard Mineral Resources Act last week. 65,000 km² in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. 619 megatons of polymetallic nodules sitting on the abyssal plain like loose change. Nickel, cobalt, manganese, copper, the entire battery and grid stack in a layer with no drilling, no overburden, no water table to poison.

Thirty-two governments have lined up at the ISA demanding a moratorium. The risk argument arrives without comparison. Indonesian laterite advancing through rainforest does not register. Cobalt artisanal pits in Lualaba do not register. The claim that LFP retires the question forgets that LFP still needs lithium, that grid copper has no chemistry alternative, that two billion electric vehicles need windings.

A precautionary pause on the lowest-impact source preserves the most violent one as the binding constraint. Greenpeace keeps the iconography of seabed octopuses. The DRC supply chain proceeds because it is harder to photograph.

Capital does not negotiate with the chorus. The nodules will be lifted. The moratorium only assigns the rent.