Under Water

Last night's "60 Minutes" edition featured a report from Bill Whitaker on rocks at the bottom of the ocean containing precious metals and rare-earth compounds and the race to harvest them.  Though there are environmental concerns, Whitaker's report explained how companies from different countries were trying to stay within environmental parameters in removing the rocks from the ocean floor.  The goal of harvesting and processing these metals is to make the batteries necessary for making electric cars.

As always, though, the United States isn't part of this bold expedition.  It seems that the seabed that is the most ripe for these metals to be harvested is in an area of the eastern Pacific governed by the Law of the Sea treaty, a treaty I've referred to before on this blog and - like so many multilateral treaties - a treaty that the U.S. wants no part of.  Actually, the Senate would ratify it - pro-treaty senators have more votes than they need - but 22 Republicans are preventing it from going through, and you can bet your sweet candy bar that Mitch McConnell is one of them.

Their argument against it? It cedes too much authority to the United Nations, and Americans don't cede authority to anyone.  But we are ceding our economic advantage and what's left of our scientific credibility to everyone by not being able to harvest these rocks for electric-car batteries.  Oh, right - apart from outsider-automaker Tesla, American car companies are paying little more than lip service to developing and selling electric cars.   

It should be noted that American aversion to multilateral treaties managing the planet's affairs and resources go back to long before Trump came along - the Law of the Sea treaty was written in the early 1980s, when Trump was busy destroying the old Bonwit Teller store in Manhattan to build his stupid tower.  And there are several other treaties of similar nature that the United States refuses to ratify.  Since 1945, we Americans have seen ourselves as being so powerful and so omnipotent that we don't need no stinking treaties to tell us how to run the world.  Which is exactly why we don't deserve to run it.  Democratic presidential candidates talk about restoring America's leadership in the world, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea.  We only ended up being the leader of the world after the Second World War for two reasons:

• The U.S. was one of only two industrialized countries not partially or totally destroyed by the war.
• Canada didn't want the job of world leadership.

Forget ratifying the Law of the Sea treaty now.  America is a sinking ship going down for the third time.