In October of last year, an enormous new creature appeared on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean, about 1,400 miles southwest of San Diego. “Our people, land, and resources were exploited to fuel the industrial revolution elsewhere, and we are now expected to bear the brunt of the destructive consequences of that industrial revolution,” including sea-level rise, wrote Margo Deiye, Nauru’s representative to the UN, in a December newspaper op-ed explaining why her country is supporting sea mining. There’s a widespread feeling that it is too soon to be giving out permission to start mining, he says, but it’s not clear how the organization might stop that from happening