As the world starts to seriously entertain the possibility of commercially mining the deep sea for valuable metals, it's worth taking a closer look at the claims used to justify its potentially long-lived impacts.

The government still contains four ministers who criticised “government-subsidised green technology” back in 2012, but one of them seems to have changed his mind about state intervention since then, and there are some new environmentally-friendly faces around too.

Campaigners have criticised Captain Ian Finley, a UK resident who has represented the Cook Islands at the International Maritime Organization since 2006, for consistently defending industry interests.

The union dubbed plans to shift away from fossil-fuelled heating “utterly absurd”, a statement one union member called “disappointing”.