In the 1950s, when a reporter asked medical researcher Jonas Salk who owned the patent on the new polio vaccine, he replied, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
Times have changed, and now everything from seeds to groundwater, colours and smells, common words and two-second samples of music, are locked up as private property.
The Trump administration’s goal of mining on the Moon is simply the logical extension of this ethic….
The point of talking about the commons is precisely to name those types of value that have no price tag. Things that are essential to our planetary survival, that are sacred and core to our identities, and that are critical to the flourishing of everyone and future generations – these must be regarded inalienable.
They are not for sale.
We may have drifted a long way from this ethic, but it is not too late to insist that the Moon – and so many other gifts of the universe – belong to all of us.
More at Al Jazeera
Article submitted by, salticidae.