1AC Inc workers NC Cap K T Workers case 1AR All NR Cap K case 2AR K Case
Western JV Novice Championship
1
Opponent: Harker VL | Judge: Liu, Leighton
1AC- Space commons v3 NC- innov da space funding cp 1AR- all NR- all 2AR- all
Western JV Novice Championship
4
Opponent: Meadow ZP | Judge: Jain, Arkita
1AC- Space commons v3 NC- Space col DA case 1AR- all NR- all 2AR- all
Western JV Novice Championship
5
Opponent: La Reina LS | Judge: Gao, Angela
1AC- Space Commons v3 NC- Mining DA Innov DA case 1AR- all NR- all 2AR- all
Woodward
2
Opponent: Lexington EY | Judge: Johnson, Dillon
1AC- Commons v3 NC- Dib DA India Sopo DA case 1AR- all NR- Dib DA case 2AR- all
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Tournament: All | Round: Finals | Opponent: All | Judge: All Hi, I'm Hope (she/her) email: hopelee24@marlborough.org phone #: 13104256507 (preferred method of communication)
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3/18/22
JF - AC - Space Commons
Tournament: College Prep | Round: 2 | Opponent: San Mateo YR | Judge: Evans, Rex AC Advantage 1: Space Debris Private companies are cramming satellites into the Earth’s orbit which are quickly becoming defunct pieces of “space junk.” Therese Wood, 20 - ("Who owns our orbit: Just how many satellites are there in space?," World Economic Forum, 10-23-2020, 12-8-2021https:www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/visualizing-easrth-satellites-sapce-spacex)AW There are nearly 6,000 satellites circling the Earth, but only 40 are operational. Satellites are a vital part of our infrastructure, helping us to use GPS, access the internet and support studies of the Earth. Out of the 2,666 operational satellites circling the globe in April 2020, 1,007 were for communication services. 446 are used for observing the Earth and 97 for navigation/ GPS purposes. Over half of satellites in space are non-operational. For centuries, humans have looked to space and the stars for answers. The fascination is more than philosophical—it’s coupled with the need to solve problems here on Earth. Today, there are seemingly countless benefits and applications of space technology. Satellites, for instance, are becoming critical for everything from internet connectivity and precision agriculture, to border security and archaeological study. Right now, there are nearly 6,000 satellites circling our tiny planet. About 60 of those are defunct satellites—space junk—and roughly 40 are operational. As highlighted in the chart above, The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), determined that 2,666 operational satellites circled the globe in April of 2020. Over the coming decade, it’s estimated by Euroconsult that 990 satellites will be launched every year. This means that by 2028, there could be 15,000 satellites in orbit. Nearly 10,000 satellites will be launched form 2019-2028. Image: Visual Capitalist With SpaceX’s planned Starlink constellation of 12,000 satellites and Amazon’s proposed constellation in the works, the new space race continues its acceleration. Let’s take a closer look at who operates those satellites and how they apply their technology. Technology with a purpose Humans have long used space for navigation. While sailors once relied on the stars, today we use satellites for GPS, navigation, and various other applications. More than half of Earth’s operational satellites are launched for commercial purposes. About 61 of those provide communications, including everything from satellite TV and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity to global internet. Over 1,000 satellites are for communication purposes. Image: Visual Capitalist Second to communications, 27 of commercial satellites have been launched for Earth Observation (EO) purposes, including environmental monitoring and border security. Commercial satellites, however, can serve multiple purposes. One week, a satellite may be ‘tasked’ to image a contested border. It could later be tasked to monitor the reclamation of a mining site or even the aftermath of a natural disaster. 54 of operational satellites are for commercial use. Image: Visual Capitalist Government and civil purposes make up 21 of all of Earth’s operational satellites, and military purposes come in at 13. Who owns Earth’s orbit? Space operators SpaceX—founded by Elon Musk—is not only a disruptive launch provider for missions to the International Space Station (saving NASA millions). It’s also the largest commercial operator of satellites on the planet. With 358 satellites launched as of April, part of SpaceX’s mission is to boost navigation capabilities and supply the world with space-based internet. While the company operated 22 of the world’s operational satellites as of April, it went on to launch an additional 175 satellites in the span of one month, from August to September 2020 Increasing space debris levels will inevitably set off a chain of collisions. Chelsea MuñOz-Patchen, 19 - ("Regulating the Space Commons: Treating Space Debris as Abandoned Property in Violation of the Outer Space Treaty," University of Chicago, 2019, 12-6-2021, https://cjil.uchicago.edu/publication/regulating-space-commons-treating-space-debris-abandoned-property-violation-outer-space)//AW Debris poses a threat to functioning space objects and astronauts in space, and may cause damage to the earth’s surface upon re-entry.29 Much of the small debris cannot be tracked due to its size and the velocity at which it travels, making it impossible to anticipate and maneuver to avoid collisions.30 To remain in orbit, debris must travel at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour.31 At this speed even very small pieces of debris can cause serious damage, threatening a spacecraft and causing expensive damage.32 There are millions of these very small pieces, and thousands of larger ones.33 The small-to-medium pieces of debris “continuously shed fragments like lens caps, booster upper stages, nuts, bolts, paint chips, motor sprays of aluminum particles, glass splinters, waste water, and bits of foil,” and may stay in orbit for decades or even centuries, posing an ongoing risk.34 Debris ten centimeters or larger in diameter creates the likelihood of complete destruction for any functioning satellite with which it collides.35 Large nonfunctional objects remaining in orbit are a collision threat, capable of creating huge amounts of space debris and taking up otherwise useful orbit space.36 This issue is of growing importance as more nations and companies gain the ability to launch satellites and other objects into space.37 From February 2009 through the end of 2010, more than thirty-two collision-avoidance maneuvers were reportedly used to avoid debris by various space agencies and satellite companies, and as of March 2012, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) had to take shelter three times due to close calls with passing debris.38 These maneuvers require costly fuel usage and place a strain on astronauts.39 Furthermore, the launches of some spacecraft have “been delayed because of the presence of space debris in the planned flight paths.”40 In 2011, Euroconsult, a satellite consultant, projected that there would be “a 51 increase in satellites launched in the next decade over the number launched in the past decade.”41 In addition to satellites, the rise of commercial space tourism will also increase the number of objects launched into space and thus the amount of debris.42 The more objects are sent into space, and the more collisions create cascades of debris, the greater the risk of damage to vital satellites and other devices relied on for “weather forecasting, telecommunications, commerce, and national security.”43 The Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines44 were created by UNCOPUOS with input from the IADC and adopted in 2007.45 The guidelines were developed to address the problem of space debris and were intended to “increase mutual understanding on acceptable activities in space.”46 These guidelines are nonbinding but suggest best practices to implement at the national level when planning for a launch. Many nations have adopted the guidelines to some degree, and some have gone beyond what the guidelines suggest.47 While the guidelines do not address existing debris, they do much to prevent the creation of new debris. The Kessler Syndrome is the biggest concern with space debris. The Kessler Syndrome is a cascade created when debris hits a space object, creating new debris and setting off a chain reaction of collisions that eventually closes off entire orbits.48 The concern is that this cascade will occur when a tipping point is reached at which the natural removal rate cannot keep up with the amount of new debris added.49 At this point a collision could set off a cascade destroying all space objects within the orbit.50 In 2011, The National Research Council predicted that the Kessler Syndrome could happen within ten to twenty years.51 Donald J. Kessler, the astrophysicist and NASA scientist who theorized the Kessler Syndrome in 1978, believes this cascade may be a century away, meaning that there is still time to develop a solution.52 It cascades with catastrophic results including nuclear war, mass starvation, and economic destruction. Les Johnson 13, Deputy Manager for NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Co-Investigator for the JAXA T-Rex Space Tether Experiment and PI of NASA's ProSEDS Experiment, Master's Degree in Physics from Vanderbilt University, Popular Science Writer, and NASA Technologist, Frequent Contributor to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Sodety and Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Space Society, the World Future Society, and MENSA, Sky Alert!: When Satellites Fail, p. 9-12 language modified Whatever the initial cause, the result may be the same. A satellite destroyed in orbit will break apart into thousands of pieces, each traveling at over 8 km/sec. This virtual shotgun blast, with pellets traveling 20 times faster than a bullet, will quickly spread out, with each pellet now following its own orbit around the Earth. With over 300,000 other pieces of junk already there, the tipping point is crossed and a runaway series of collisions begins. A few orbits later, two of the new debris pieces strike other satellites, causing them to explode into thousands more pieces of debris. The rate of collisions increases, now with more spacecraft being destroyed. Called the "Kessler Effect", after the NASA scientist who first warned of its dangers, these debris objects, now numbering in the millions, cascade around the Earth, destroying every satellite in low Earth orbit. Without an atmosphere to slow them down, thus allowing debris pieces to bum up, most debris (perhaps numbering in the millions) will remain in space for hundreds or thousands of years. Any new satellite will be threatened by destruction as soon as it enters space, effectively rendering many Earth orbits unusable. But what about us on the ground? How will this affect us? Imagine a world that suddenly loses all of its space technology. If you are like most people, then you would probably have a few fleeting thoughts about the Apollo-era missions to the Moon, perhaps a vision of the Space Shuttle launching astronauts into space for a visit to the International Space Station (ISS), or you might fondly recall the "wow" images taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. In short, you would know that things important to science would be lost, but you would likely not assume that their loss would have any impact on your daily life. Now imagine a world that suddenly loses network and cable television, accurate weather forecasts, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation, some cellular phone networks, on-time delivery of food and medical supplies via truck and train to stores and hospitals in virtually every community in America, as well as science useful in monitoring such things as climate change and agricultural sustainability. Add to this the disabling crippling of the US military who now depend upon spy satellites, space-based communications systems, and GPS to know where their troops and supplies are located at all times and anywhere in the world. The result is a nightmarish world, one step away from nuclear war, economic disaster, and potential mass starvation. This is the world in which we are now perilously close to living. Space satellites now touch our lives in many ways. And, unfortunately, these satellites are extremely vulnerable to risks arising from a half-century of carelessness regarding protecting the space environment around the Earth as well as from potential adversaries such as China, North Korea, and Iran. No government policy has put us at risk. It has not been the result of a conspiracy. No, we are dependent upon them simply because they offer capabilities that are simply unavailable any other way. Individuals, corporations, and governments found ways to use the unique environment of space to provide services, make money, and better defend the country. In fact, only a few space visionaries and futurists could have foreseen where the advent of rocketry and space technology would take us a mere 50 years since those first satellites orbited the Earth. It was the slow progression of capability followed by dependence that puts us at risk. The exploration and use of space began in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. The United States soon followed with Explorer 1. Since then, the nations of the world have launched over 8,000 spacecraft. Of these, several hundred are still providing information and services to the global economy and the world's governments. Over time, nations, corporations, and individuals have grown accustomed to the services these spacecraft provide and many are dependent upon them. Commercial aviation, shipping, emergency services, vehicle fleet tracking, financial transactions, and agriculture are areas of the economy that are increasingly reliant on space. Telestar 1, launched into space in the year of my birth, 1962, relayed the world's first live transatlantic news feed and showed that space satellites can be used to relay television signals, telephone calls, and data. The modern telecommunications age was born. We've come a long way since Telstar; most television networks now distribute most, if not ali, of their programming via satellite. Cable television signals are received by local providers from satellite relays before being sent to our homes and businesses using cables. With 65 of US households relying on cable television and a growing percentage using satellite dishes to receive signals from direct-to-home satellite television providers, a large number of people would be cut off from vital information in an emergency should these satellites be destroyed. And communications satellites relay more than television signals. They serve as hosts to corporate video conferences and convey business, banking, and other commercial information to and from all areas of the planet. The first successful weather satellite was TIROS. Launched in 1960, TIROS operated for only 78 days but it served as the precursor for today's much more long-lived weather satellites, which provide continuous monitoring of weather conditions around the world. Without them, providing accurate weather forecasts for virtually any place on the globe more than a day in advance would be nearly impossible. Figure !.1 shows a satellite image of Hurricane Ivan approaching the Alabama Gulf coast in 2004. Without this type of information, evacuation warnings would have to be given more generally, resulting in needless evacuations and lost economic activity (from areas that avoid landfall) and potentially increasing loss of life in areas that may be unexpectedly hit. The formerly top-secret Corona spy satellites began operation in 1959 and provided critical information about the Soviet Union's military and industrial capabilities to a nervous West in a time of unprecedented paranoia and nuclear risk. With these satellites, US military planners were able to understand and assess the real military threat posed by the Soviet Union. They used information provided by spy satellites to help avert potential military confrontations on numerous occasions. Conversely, the Soviet Union's spy satellites were able to observe the United States and its allies, with similar results. It is nearly impossible to move an army and hide it from multiple eyes in the sky. Satellite information is critical to all aspects of US intelligence and military planning. Spy satellites are used to monitor compliance with international arms treaties and to assess the military activities of countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Figure 1.2 shows the capability of modem unclassified space-based imaging. The capability of the classified systems is presumed to be significantly better, providing much more detail. Losing these satellites would place global militaries on high alert and have them operating, literally, in the blind. Our military would suddenly become vulnerable in other areas as well. GPS, a network of 24-32 satellites in medium-Earth orbit, was developed to provide precise position information to the military, and it is now in common use by individuals and industry. The network, which became fully operational in 1993, allows our armed forces to know their exact locations anywhere in the world. It is used to guide bombs to their targets with unprecedented accuracy, requiring that only one bomb be used to destroy a target that would have previously required perhaps hundreds of bombs to destroy in the pre-GPS world (which, incidentally, has resulted in us reducing our stockpile of non-GPS-guided munitions dramatically). It allows soldiers to navigate in the dark or in adverse weather or sandstorms. Without GPS, our military advantage over potential adversaries would be dramatically reduced or eliminated.
Advantage 2: Colonialism Private expansion into space replicates a colonialist mindset, perpetuating problems on Earth. Mccormick 21 Ted McCormick writes about the history of science, empire, and economic thought. He has a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and teaches at Concordia University in Montreal. “The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world”. 8-15-2021. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-billionaire-space-race-reflects-a-colonial-mindset-that-fails-to-imagine-a-different-world-165235. Accessed 12-15-2021; marlborough JH It was a time of political uncertainty, cultural conflict and social change. Private ventures exploited technological advances and natural resources, generating unprecedented fortunes while wreaking havoc on local communities and environments. The working poor crowded cities, spurring property-holders to develop increased surveillance and incarceration regimes. Rural areas lay desolate, buildings vacant, churches empty — the stuff of moralistic elegies. ¶Epidemics raged, forcing quarantines in the ports and lockdowns in the streets. Mortality data was the stuff of weekly news and commentary. ¶Depending on the perspective, mobility — chosen or compelled — was either the cause or the consequence of general disorder. Uncontrolled mobility was associated with political instability, moral degeneracy and social breakdown. However, one form of planned mobility promised to solve these problems: colonization. ¶Europe and its former empires have changed a lot since the 17th century. But the persistence of colonialism as a supposed panacea suggests we are not as far from the early modern period as we think. ¶Colonial promise of limitless growth ¶Seventeenth-century colonial schemes involved plantations around the Atlantic, and motivations that now sound archaic. Advocates of expansion such as the English writer Richard Hakluyt, whose Discourse of Western Planting (1584) outlined the benefits of empire for Queen Elizabeth: the colonization of the New World would prevent Spanish Catholic hegemony and provide a chance to claim Indigenous souls for Protestantism. ¶But a key promise was the economic and social renewal of the mother country through new commodities, trades and territory. Above all, planned mobility would cure the ills of apparent overpopulation. Sending the poor overseas to cut timber, mine gold or farm cane would, according to Hakluyt, turn the “multitudes of loiterers and idle vagabonds” that “swarm(ed)” England’s streets and “pestered and stuffed” its prisons into industrious workers, providing raw materials and a reason to multiply. Colonization would fuel limitless growth. ¶As English plantations took shape in Ulster, Virginia, New England and the Caribbean, “projectors” — individuals (nearly always men) who promised to use new kinds of knowledge to radically and profitably transform society — tied mobility to new sciences and technologies. They were inspired as much by English philosopher Francis Bacon’s vision of a tech-centred state in The New Atlantis as by his advocacy of observation and experiment. ¶Discovery and invention ¶The English agriculturalist Gabriel Plattes cautioned in 1639 that “the finding of new worlds is not like to be a perpetual trade.” But many more saw a supposedly vacant America as an invitation to transplant people, plants and machinery. ¶The inventor Cressy Dymock (from Lincolnshire, where fen-drainage schemes were turning wetlands dry) sought support for a “perpetual motion engine” that would plough fields in England, clear forest in Virginia and drive sugar mills in Barbados. Dymock identified private profit and the public good by speeding plantation and replacing costly draught animals with cheaper enslaved labour. Projects across the empire would employ the idle, create “elbow-room,” heal “unnatural divisions” and make England “the garden of the world.” ¶Extraterrestrial exploration ¶Today, the moon and Mars are in projectors’ sights. And the promises billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos make for colonization are similar in ambition to those of four centuries ago. ¶As Bezos told an audience at the International Space Development Conference in 2018: “We will have to leave this planet, and we’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better.” Bezos traces his thinking to Princeton physicist Gerald O’Neill, whose 1974 article “The Colonization of Space” (and 1977 book, The High Frontier) presented orbiting settlements as solutions to nearly every major problem facing the Earth. Bezos echoes O’Neill’s proposal to move heavy industry — and industrial labour — off the planet, rezoning Earth as a mostly residential, green space. A garden, as it were. ¶Musk’s plans for Mars are at once more cynical and more grandiose, in timeline and technical requirements if not in ultimate extent. They center on the dubious possibility of “terraforming” Mars using resources and technologies that don’t yet exist. ¶Musk planned to send the first humans to Mars in 2024, and by 2030, he envisioned breaking ground on a city, launching as many as 100,000 voyages from Earth to Mars within a century. ¶As of 2020, the timeline had been pushed back slightly, in part because terraforming may require bombarding Mars with 10,000 nuclear missiles to start. But the vision – a Mars of thriving crops, pizza joints and “entrepreneurial opportunities,” preserving life and paying dividends while Earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable — remains. Like the colonial company-states of the 17th and 18th centuries, Musk’s SpaceX leans heavily on government backing but will make its own laws on its newly settled planet. ¶A failure of the imagination ¶The techno-utopian visions of Musk and Bezos betray some of the same assumptions as their early modern forebears. They offer colonialism as a panacea for complex social, political and economic ills, rather than attempting to work towards a better world within the constraints of our environment. ¶And rather than facing the palpably devastating consequences of an ideology of limitless growth on our planet, they seek to export it, unaltered, into space. They imagine themselves capable of creating liveable environments where none exist. ¶But for all their futuristic imagery, they have failed to imagine a different world. And they have ignored the history of colonialism on this one. Empire never recreated Eden, but it did fuel centuries of growth based on expropriation, enslavement and environmental transformation in defiance of all limits. We are struggling with these consequences today. Private space colonization would amplify social inequalities on Earth and contribute little scientific value – Spencer ‘17 Spencer, Keith A. senior editor at Salon “Keep the Red Planet Red.” Jacobin, 2 May 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/mars-elon-musk-space-exploration-nasa-colonization. Accesserd 12/15/2021 marlborough JH As the Western liberal order continues to unravel, can you really blame anyone who wants to get off this planet? Since space travel became technologically feasible in the twentieth century, many thinkers — from Arthur C. Clarke to Buckminster Fuller — envisioned the human colonization of other planets as all but inevitable. “Man will not always stay on Earth,” wrote Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, “the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.” In their heydays, both the American and Soviet space programs funded research into Mars colonization, viewing it as the next logical step for humanity. In the past two decades however, people have started to pin their hopes for intergalactic travel on private groups instead of public agencies. While President Obama was privatizing much of the American space program, a flurry of ventures released competing proposals to visit and/or colonize the red planet. These schemes’ feasibility and harebrained-ness vary: the Mars Foundation, run by multimillionaire former investor Dennis Tito, is soliciting private donations to send a couple on a flyby of the red planet. Mars One, a Dutch nonprofit, wants to fund a permanent human colony through “merchandise sales, ads on video content, brand partnerships, speaking engagements, broadcasting rights, intellectual property rights, games and apps, and events.” The most famous — and perhaps most likely to succeed — comes from entrepreneur and engineer Elon Musk, the multibillionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Musk’s articulation of his Mars mission reveals not only what’s wrong with how we think about extraterrestrial colonies and resources, but also how little faith most people have in democracy here on Earth. Interplanetary Technocracy Given his reputation as an engineering genius, Musk’s vision for colonization seems the most plausible of the private missions to Mars. After all, SpaceX, which he admitted to founding specifically to colonize the solar system, became the first private company to successfully launch a rocket into orbit in 2008. In September 2016, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Musk laid out a detailed vision for his colonization project, including financial estimates, engineering specs for the reusable “Interplanetary Transit System,” and the price of a passenger ticket — around $200,000. Musk’s presentation even included a snazzy computer-animated video of the transit system in action and details about the long trip there, which would offer colonists games, restaurants, and entertainment. “It’ll be, like, really fun to go . . . You’re gonna have a great time,” Musk said. His approach to colonizing Mars comes straight out of Silicon Valley’s playbook: Musk has taken a “problem” — how to colonize Mars — and hacked a feasible “solution” that is one part engineering, one part moxie. Just add investors and we’ll be building cities on the red planet in no time. Though vague, Musk reiterated that his vision would need funding. His talk of “tickets” implies that colonists will likely pay for much of the mission. Unlike a space agency’s astronaut selection process, then, his Mars mission will be limited to those who can afford it. In that sense, Musk’s colonization plan looks a lot like joining a country club or gated community — or any other model of private access to space for those who can afford it. Musk’s proposal — heavy on the engineering and business details, light on the philosophical or political implications of colonization — epitomizes technocracy. He doesn’t seem interested in thinking through Mars’s policy or governance, the labor necessitated by building a civilization from scratch, or the problems that will arise from sending rich tourists to self-manage in a place with scant resources demanding communal organization and thinking. The True Value of Mars For some, sending a few rich folks off to Mars seems like a great idea. After all, it’s hardly an Eden waiting to be destroyed. Unlike previous colonial projects, there are no natives to exploit; no wildlife to hunt to extinction; no ecosystem to radically alter; no fossil fuels to extract; and no climate in danger of destruction from carbon emission. Mars’s atmosphere is already 96 percent carbon dioxide! Why not let Musk and his millionaire buddies take off for a few rounds of golf on the frosted dunes? If they get stuck there, all the better. From a humanistic perspective, however, even a lifeless world like Mars holds incredible scientific, educational, and environmental value. To let private interests colonize, terraform, or populate it without considering this collective value would be short-sighted. Indeed, when it comes to colonization, we should hope humanity has learned from its past mistakes and is ready to set upon a more democratic process. Perhaps Earth can agree to hold a public discussion before we set about strip-mining Mars’s glorious dunes, vistas, and mountains, lest the tallest mountain in the solar system become a trash heap like Everest. Government space agencies have gone to great lengths to keep the scientific and social benefits of publicly funded exploration intact. This is why NASA makes all its mission data public, and also why it insists on sterilizing space probes to avoid contaminating other worlds with cellular life from Earth — one stray terrestrial extremophile could confuse the search for microbial life off-planet. The agency, recognizing its work’s educational value, has sent elementary school children’s experiments into space and hosted public naming competitions for geographic features. Likewise, NASA thinks beyond the engineering challenges: they also consider space travel’s psychological and biological effects, surely an important field of study in anticipation of the long space flights required for interplanetary travel. Private industry will be unlikely to follow these collective practices, as its desire for profit or for exclusive property rights — physical and intellectual — will outweigh any public benefit. I Want to Believe The public and media reaction to Musk’s presentation — more than the presentation itself —reflects the current state of our politics. “The mood at the conference was almost as giddy as a rock concert or the launch of a new Apple product, with people lining up for Mr. Musk’s presentation a couple of hours in advance,” wrote Kenneth Chang in the New York Times, who devoted 1,200 words to it. “Elon Musk finally told the world his vision for colonizing Mars, and it turned out to be one hell of a show,” exclaimed Loren Grush in a video article for the Verge. Grush noted that Musk drew an “insane crowd,” describing how “people actually stampeded into the hall where his lecture was in order to get a good seat.” He began in lofty tones: “I want to . . . make Mars seem possible. Make it seem as though it is something we can do in our lifetimes.” This statement implied that we needed some great technological leap forward before embarking on this adventure, but, in fact, travel to Mars has been possible for well over half a century. Given the political will, we can go right now. The subtext of Musk’s message, then, was that our democratic governments will never execute big science and engineering projects. People should trust in the private vision for colonization and space travel instead. In Earth politics, this lack of faith in democratic institutions is nothing new. This idea’s policy implications — that collectively we can’t have big public projects or any sort of real democratic decision-making, and must cede our whims to privately funded foundations and technocratic “experts” — have already taken hold of most countries. As far as I could find, none of the magazines that covered Musk’s announcement mentioned this metatheme, namely, that a public and democratically organized colonization of Mars will never happen. No one questioned the premise that we must let billionaires decide how and when to go to Mars — or that it is the only possible way to get there. Musk’s tech-industry social circle benefits from branding technology as synonymous with progress. As a result, many tech employees work long hours to achieve this invisible notion of progress, but their work just fattens their employer’s profit margins. One can imagine the grueling labor required to make an inhospitable planet habitable. On Mars, employees would exhaust themselves for a corporation under the guise of “survival.” After all, regardless of whether a foundation or a corporation spearheads the colonization effort, they will be incentivized, even forty million miles away, to squeeze as much labor out of their workers at the lowest cost. Further, the question of who is allowed to go to Mars will become as important as the question of who isn’t. If, as Musk proposes, the trip requires a “ticket” — which, as he claims, will eventually drop to only $100,000 — it seems probable that those who can afford to go will mostly resemble, ethnically and politically, Earth’s ruling class. Imagine: the red planet turned racist country club. These questions matter more than how to engineer a rocket or how to build greenhouses or how to harvest water. In fact, state-funded research has already largely solved these technical problems — or, at the least, led to numerous creative ideas about making a Mars colony self-sufficient. The Martian Commons Any colonization effort on Mars — even if only a small number of humans go — will present huge political challenges in terms of the labor and personal rights of its citizens. To wit: what kinds of reproductive restrictions will exist on a planet of scarce resources? How will colonists ration food and activity? What about personal privacy? If Martian citizens are working in a life-or-death situation, can the workers strike? At least in its early years, Mars would have a scarcity economy — in other words, resources would likely have to be rationed in order for the collective to survive. A private colony would be unlikely to make any kind of egalitarian guarantee — after all, if there’s a ticket price, there will certainly be a Martian service economy pampering the space tourists. Inequalities will emerge in terms of labor, housing, food, and access to other resources. In fact, we already know what a privatized Mars might resemble: Mount Everest. At higher elevations, it becomes a barren, lifeless, cold world, where climbers require oxygen tanks to survive. The cost of ascending is as steep as the mountain: between $30,000 to $100,000. Climbers’ journeys are only made possible by their Sherpas’ exploited labor, many of whom die in accidents and are paid as little as $5,000 a year by Western companies. Now imagine this situation replicated forty million miles off, on a lifeless planet, where two-way Earth communication takes almost an hour, and you can envision how dire things could get. A New Hope Musk spent nearly an hour of his speech detailing the technological aspects of Mars travel: the landers, the rockets, the fuel costs, and so on. Musk takes a technology-first approach and rarely mentions the numerous social aspects. His speech and its collective reactions attest to a naïve, John Galt fantasy about how policy and engineering come to pass: through the mind of the lone genius, who alone holds the key to humanity’s future. We saw the same fantasy at work last week when, in the wake of President Trump’s executive order banning emigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced his plan to hire ten thousand refugees and was immediately hailed as a liberal hero. The message was clear: we can’t hope to help refugees ourselves, or on a democratic basis — we must rely on the whims of the rich to push forward progressive causes. Alas, the reaction to Musk’s speech also demonstrates how public sentiment has changed: collectively, we no longer believe in public space exploration. Even if we know state agencies can launch a Mars mission, few think it will happen. This doesn’t bode well for how we think of the commons. Are rich people and their foundations the only ones who can save us? The plethora of private Mars proposals reflects a lack of faith in democracy on Earth, in particular in our democratic influence over the directions science and engineering research take. And while faith in public institutions sits at an all-time low, we seem more than happy to hear what the rich can make possible and to believe their promises. Musk is just one of many technocrats who think of a Mars voyage as a technological problem. Not only is it not a technological problem, it’s not even a problem. Colonization of Mars should be seen as a complex social and political policy, with so much potential to create inequality and oppression that it cannot rationally be undertaken without political consensus and a stratagem for maintaining democracy and egalitarianism. We are ready to colonize Mars, and have been for half a century. Doing so without a democratic plan will present unimaginable dangers for the planet and colonists alike. As socialists, our rallying cry should be this: Keep the red planet red! Private appropriation of space instead of treating it as a global commons amplifies inequality on Earth. Stockwell 20 Samuel Stockwell, 7-20-2020, "Legal ‘Black Holes’ in Outer Space: The Regulation of Private Space Companies," E-International Relations, https://www.e-ir.info/2020/07/20/legal-black-holes-in-outer-space-the-regulation-of-private-space-companies/marlborough JH On 30th April 2020, NASA – the US government’s space agency – awarded three private space companies a joint-contract worth $967m to complete a lunar mission by 2024, in what was celebrated as “the last piece that America needs in order to get to the moon” by NASA administrator Jim Brindestine (The Telegraph, 2020). Yet, whilst this development was widely covered in the media, less coverage has focused on the extent to which existing international legislation surrounding outer space endeavours appropriately applies to private entities. Indeed, the prospect of a corporate foothold within the extra-terrestrial domain has thrown up both a mixture of optimism and concern regarding the potential benefits of expanding capital projects into space (Adolph, 2006; Dickens and Ormrod, 2007). ¶By adopting the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty (OST) as an analytical framework in relation to the rise of the so-called US ‘NewSpace’ actors, this essay argues that there are significant legal ambiguities regarding the status of private space companies in orbital space. Such loopholes allow the US government to circumvent its own obligations to the OST, whilst simultaneously undermining the notion of space as a ‘global commons’ through a commodification process. The lack of specificity within the OST surrounding private property rights over extra-terrestrial resources risks the prospect of reinforcing Earth-bound wealth inequalities and US dominance in space, by restricting the potential economic benefits for the broader global citizenry in favour of a narrow class of wealthy American investors. Moreover, the OST’s weak clause regarding the regulation of space surveillance risks the incentivisation of a ‘global panopticon’ network of US satellites. The rise of dual-use technology is blurring the boundaries between military and civilian observations, raising serious ethical concerns over the nature of US space-based data collection. Finally, the increasing number of private satellite constellations is facilitating the possibility of cataclysmic space debris collisions which could exacerbate geopolitical tensions. Such developments are also contributing towards the contamination of the broader space environment in ways that the OST had never envisioned. ¶The UN Outer Space Treaty and Rise of the ‘NewSpace’ Actors ¶Although ratified into international law in 1967, the UN Outer Space Treaty (OST) is perhaps still the most relevant piece of legislation for analysing state and non-state entity activity in outer space. Designed to prevent both the militarisation of space and national appropriation of celestial bodies at the height of Cold War tensions, the UN OST holds significant influence as a form of customary international law (Hebert, 2014: 6). Ratified by over 100 nations – including major spacefaring nations such as the United States, Russia and China – the treatyis widely accepted as an authoritative document and has formed the basis for all other space treaties that have succeeded it (Kramer, 2017: 129). This is in contrast to more recent legislation such as the 1972 Moon Treaty designed to promote cooperation in Moon exploration and development, which the US and other major space superpowers have refrained from signing (Adolph, 2006: 968-969). ¶The type of American actors becoming involved in the realm of outer space has undergone significant diversification. Despite working alongside NASA since the 1950s, commercial enterprises were largely confined to the manufacturing of parts utilised in rockets and other equipment for space activities (Lal, 2016: 63-66). However, the continuous sharp decline in NASA’s overall budget that has occurred since the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the increasing trends towards the privatisation of government functions has drastically altered both the capabilities and the outlooks of private space companies. Indeed, although the space economy is growing overall, global government spending decreased by 1.3 between 2012 and 2013 while commercial-sector growth increased by roughly 7 (Conklin, 2017: 33). Central to the impetus behind this private sector space boom has been the emergence of the so-called ‘NewSpace’ actors – “a broad range of primarily US-based entrepreneurs… who, for more than 30 years, have aimed to commercialise space” (Valentine, 2012: 1046). Driven by a libertarian outlook of economics, and critical of NASA’s historical grip on space exploration, these individuals portray themselves as the pioneers of the ‘final frontier’ who will save humanity from extinction through privately-funded extra-terrestrial missions (Kearnes and van Dooren, 2017: 182). ¶Near-Earth Object and Lunar Resource Mining: US Private Property in Space ¶Lunar rock samples from the Apollo missions containing rare Earth resources, such as Helium-3 which produces more power and less waste than traditional nuclear reactors on Earth, have since fuelled incentives for extra-terrestrial resource mining (Brearley, 2006: 44-46). This was further facilitated by suggestions that near-earth objects (NEOs) like the so-called ‘Anteros asteroid’ could comprise of over five trillion dollars’ worth of magnesium silicate and aluminium (Kramer, 2017: 131). ¶Envisaging appropriation concerns that might arise from the future extraction of space assets by spacefaring nations, Article II of the UN OST declared that: “Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means” (UN, 1967). The emphasis on claims of national sovereignty were intimately tied to the Cold War context at the time, where space activities were under the exclusive monopoly of governmental agencies and initiated for goals of military dominance or national prestige (Sachdeva, 2017: 210). However, the privatisation of the space industry that has occurred since the 1980s has meant that the legislation leaves an enormous amount of legal ambiguity and interpretation regarding the regulation of private resource mining in space. As Shaer (2016) demonstrates, the Article II provision fails to address either the exploitation of space for financial gain or the property claims of commercial enterprises (Shaer, 2016: 47). ¶Nevertheless, Article VI of the UN OST asserts that: “States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities” (UN, 1967; own emphasis). Some scholars have suggested that this clause significantly restrains the activities of private space corporations by incentivising states to regulate their domestic organisations for fear of liability concerns (Abeyratne, 1998: 168). However, the US government recently enacted a piece of legislation which exploited this clause, in order to circumvent its own restrictions and strengthen US economic influence in space. The passage of the 2015 SPACE Act enabled US citizens to privately “possess, own, transport, use, and sell the resources” they obtain in outer space, whilst making careful consideration to deny national sovereign claims over such materials (Leon, 2018: 500). ¶Yet, regardless of whether it is an American private company or public venture, the US is still satisfying its geopolitical interests; by exclusively siphoning off extra-terrestrial resources for American gain, the nation’s soft power is thereby extended at the expense of spacefaring adversaries such as China (Basu and Kurlekar, 2016: 65). Indeed NewSpace actors cleverly played on these strategic concerns prior to the bill’s passage, with billionaire space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow asserting that the biggest danger wasn’t private enterprises on the Moon, but that “America is asleep and does nothing, while China comes along… surveying and laying claim to the Moon” (Klinger, 2017: 222). ¶The US government’s support for private space companies is also likely to lead to the reinforcement of Earth-bound wealth inequalities in space. Many NewSpace actors frame their long-term ambitions in space with strong anthropogenic undertones, by offering the salvation of the human race from impending extinction through off-world colonial developments (Kearnes and Dooren: 2017: 182). Yet, this type of discourse disguises the highly exclusive nature of these missions. Whilst they seem to suggest that there is a stake for ordinary citizens in the vast space frontier, the reality is that these self-described space pioneers are a member of a narrow ‘cosmic elite’ – “founders of Amazon.com, Microsoft, Pay Pal… and a smattering of games designers and hotel magnates” (Parker, 2009: 91). ¶Indeed, private space enterprises have themselves suggested that they have no obligation to share mineral resources extracted in space with the global community (Klinger, 2017: 208). This is reflected in the speeches of individuals such as Nathan Ingraham, a senior editor at the tech site EngadAsteroid mining, who claimed that asteroid mining was “how America is going to move into space and develop the next Vegas Strip” (Shaer, 2016: 50). Such comments highlight a form of what Beery (2016) defines as ‘scalar politics’. In similar ways to the ‘scaling’ of unequal international relations that has constituted our relationship with outer space under the guise of the ‘global commons’ (Beery, 2016: 99), private companies – through their anthropogenic discourse – are scaling existing Earth-bound wealth inequalities and social relations into space by siphoning off extra-terrestrial resources. By constructing their endeavours in ways that appeal to the common good, NewSpace actors are therefore concealing the reality of how commercial resource extraction serves the exclusive interests of their private shareholders at the expense of the vast majority of the global population.
Private control of space inevitably leads to exploitation. Spencer ‘20 Spencer, Keith A. senior editor at Salon“Against Mars-a-Lago: Why SpaceX's Mars Colonization Plan Should Terrify You.” Salon, Salon.com, 7 Jan. 2020, https://www.salon.com/2017/10/08/against-mars-a-lago-why-spacexs-mars-colonization-plan-should-terrify-you/. When CEO Elon Musk announced last month that his aerospace company SpaceX would be sending cargo missions to Mars by 2022 — the first step in his tourism-driven colonization plan — a small cheer went up among space and science enthusiasts. Writing in the New York Post, Stephen Carter called Musk’s vision “inspiring,” a salve for politically contentious times. “Our species has turned its vision inward; our image of human possibility has grown cramped and pessimistic,” Carter wrote: "We dream less of reaching the stars than of winning the next election; less of maturing as a species than of shunning those who are different; less of the blessings of an advanced technological tomorrow than of an apocalyptic future marked by a desperate struggle to survive. Maybe a focus on the possibility of reaching our nearest planetary neighbor will help change all that." The Post editorial reflected a growing media consensus that humankind’s ultimate destiny is the colonization of the solar system — yet on a private basis. American government leaders generally agree with this vision. Obama egged on the privatization of NASA by legislating a policy shift to private commercial spaceflight, awarding government contracts to private companies like SpaceX to shuttle supplies to the International Space Station. “Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to make profit, finds ways to expand humanity,” said Dr. S. Pete Worden, the director of the NASA Ames Research lab, in 2012. And in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Vice President Mike Pence wrote of his ambitions to bring American-style capitalism to the stars: “In the years to come, American industry must be the first to maintain a constant commercial human presence in low-Earth orbit, to expand the sphere of the economy beyond this blue marble,” Pence wrote. One wonders if these luminaries know their history. There has be no instance in which a private corporation became a colonizing power that did not end badly for everyone besides the shareholders. The East India Company is perhaps the finest portent of Musk’s Martian ambitions. In 1765, the East India Company forced the Mughal emperor to sign a legal agreement that would essentially permit their company to become the de facto rulers of Bengal. The East India Company then collected taxes and used its private army, which was over 200,000 strong by the early 19th century, to repress those who got in the way of its profit margins. “It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath,” writes William Dalrymple in the Guardian. “It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history.” The East India Company came to colonize much of the Indian subcontinent. In the modern era, an era in which the right of corporations to do what they want, unencumbered, has become a sacrosanct right in the eyes of many politicians, the lessons of the East India Company seem to have been all but forgotten. As Dalrymple writes: Democracy as we know it was considered an advance over feudalism because of the power that it gave the commoners to share in collective governance. To privately colonize a nation, much less a planet, means ceding governance and control back to corporations whose interest is not ours, and indeed, is always at odds with workers and residents — particularly in a resource-limited environment like a spaceship or the red planet. Even if, as Musk suggests, a private foundation is put in charge of running the show on Mars, their interests will inherently be at odds with the workers and employees involved. After all, a private foundation is not a democracy; and as major philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation illustrate, often do the bidding of their rich donors, and take an important role in ripening industries and regions for exploitation by Western corporations. Yet Mars’ colonization is a bit different than Bengal, namely in that it is not merely underdeveloped; it is undeveloped. How do you start an entirely new economy on a virgin world with no industry? After all, Martian resource extraction and trade with Earth is not feasible; the cost of transporting material across the solar system is astronomical, and there are no obvious minerals on Mars that we don’t already have in abundance on Earth. The only basis for colonization of Mars that Musk can conceive of is one based on tourism: the rich pay an amount — Musk quotes the ticket price at $200,000 if he can get 1 million tourists to pay that — that entitles them to a round-trip ticket. And while they’re on Mars and traveling to it, they luxuriate: Musk has assured that the trip would be “fun.” This is what makes Musk’s Mars vision so different than, say, the Apollo missions or the International Space Station. This isn’t really exploration for humanity’s sake — there’s not that much science assumed here, as there was in the Moon missions. Musk wants to build the ultimate luxury package, exclusively for the richest among us. Musk isn’t trying to build something akin to Matt Damon’s spartan research base in "The Martian." He wants to build Mars-a-Lago. And an economy based on tourism, particularly high-end tourism, needs employees — even if a high degree of automation is assumed. And as I’ve written about before, that means a lot of labor at the lowest cost possible. Imagine signing away years of your life to be a housekeeper in the Mars-a-Lago hotel, with your communications, water, food, energy usage, even oxygen tightly managed by your employer, and no government to file a grievance to if your employer cuts your wages, harasses you, cuts off your oxygen. Where would Mars-a-Lago's employees turn if their rights were impinged upon? Oh wait, this planet is run privately? You have no rights. Musk's vision for Mars colonization is inherently authoritarian. The potential for the existence of the employees of the Martian tourism industry to slip into something resembling indentured servitude, even slavery, cannot be underestimated. We have government regulations for a reason on Earth — to protect us from the fresh horror Musk hopes to export to Mars. If he's considered these questions, he doesn't seem to care; for Musk, the devil's in the technological and financial details. The social and political are pretty uninteresting to him. This is unsurprising; accounts from those who have worked closely with him hint that he, like many CEOs, may be a sociopath. Even as a space enthusiast, I cannot get excited about the private colonization of Mars. You shouldn’t be either. This is not a giant leap for mankind; this is the next great leap in plutocracy. The mere notion that global wealth is so unevenly distributed that a small but sufficient sum of rich people could afford this trip is unsettling, indicative of the era of astonishing economic inequality in which we suffer. Thomas Frank, writing in Harpers, once wrote of a popular t-shirt he sighted while picnicking in a small West Virginia coal town: “Mine it union or keep it in the ground.” The idea, of course, is that the corporations interested in resource extraction do not care whatsoever about their workers’ health, safety, or well-being; the union had their interests at heart, and was able to negotiate for safety, job security, and so on. I’d like to see a similar t-shirt or bumper sticker emerge among scientists and space enthusiasts: “Explore Mars democratically, or keep it in the sky.” Space resources must be distributed democratically—this requires challenging private control of outer space Levine 15 Nick Levine, MPhil candidate in history of science at the University of Cambridge, 3-21-2015, "Democratize the Universe," Jacobin, https://jacobinmag.com/2015/03/space-industry-extraction-levine The privatization of the Milky Way has begun. Last summer, the bipartisan ASTEROIDS Act was introduced in Congress. The legislation’s aim is to grant US corporations property rights over any natural resources — like the platinum-group metals used in electronics — that they extract from asteroids. The bill took advantage of an ambiguity in the United Nations’ 1967 Outer Space Treaty. That agreement forbade nations and private organizations from claiming territory on celestial bodies, but was unclear about whether the exploitation of their natural resources would be allowed, and if so, on what terms. The legal framework governing the economic development of outer space will have enormous effects on the distribution of wealth and income in the Milky Way and beyond. We could fight for a galactic democracy, where the proceeds of the space economy are distributed widely. Or we could accept the trickle-down astronomics anticipated by the ASTEROIDS Act, which would allow for the concentration of vast amounts of economic and political power in the hands of a few corporations and the most technologically developed nations. Given the pressing problems of inequality and climate change on Earth, the US left has been understandably uninterested in or largely dismissive of any space pursuits. For this reason, it remains unprepared to organize around extraterrestrial economic justice. The Left’s rejection of space has effectively ceded the celestial commons to the business interests who would literally universalize laissez-faire. Organizing around extraterrestrial politics wasn’t always treated as an escapist distraction. In the 1970s, fighting for a celestial commons was a pillar of developing countries’ struggle to create a more equitable economic order. Starting in the 1960s, a coalition of underdeveloped nations, many recently decolonized, asserted their strength in numbers in the United Nations by forming a caucus known as the Group of 77. In the early 1970s, this bloc announced its intention to establish a “new international economic order,” which found its expression in a series of UN treaties governing international regions, like sea beds and outer space, that they hoped would spread the economic benefits of the commons more equitably, with special attention to less developed nations. For these countries — as well as for the nervous US business interests that opposed them — their plan to “socialize the moon,” as some put it at the time, was the first step toward a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power in human society. It will be years before the industrialization of outer space is economically viable, if it ever is. But the legal framework that would shape that transition is being worked out now. The ASTEROIDS Act was submitted on behalf of those who would benefit most from a laissez-faire extraterrestrial system. If we leave the discussion about celestial property rights to the business interests that monopolize it now, any dream of economic democracy in outer space will go the way of jetpacks, flying cars, and the fifteen-hour workweek. As Below, So Above Left critics of space proposals make the same mistakes as the most techno-utopian starry-eyed industrialists. From the point of view of the latter, celestial development will provide ultimate salvation to the human race by making us a multi-planetary species; the former see outer space as an infinite void essentially antagonistic to human life, interest in which is only orchestrated for cynical political ends. Each side misconceives extraterrestrial pursuits as qualitatively different from economic activities on Earth. Venturing into space may be a greater technical challenge; it may cost more, be more dangerous, or be a mistaken use of resources. But to understand these prospects in existential terms rather than as a new episode in the familiar history of industrial development and resource extraction — with all the political-strategic dangers and organizing opportunities that come with them — is to be blinded by the space romanticism that is a peculiar vestige of Cold War geopolitics. Whether and how we should go to space are not profound philosophical questions, at least not primarily. What’s at stake is not just the “stature of man,” as Hannah Arendt put it, but a political-economic struggle over the future of the celestial commons, which could result in a dramatic intensification of inequality — or a small step for humankind toward a more egalitarian state of affairs on our current planet. Undoubtedly, there are good reasons to be skeptical about going to space. Some have argued that it shifts attention away from solving the difficult problems of economic and environmental justice on Earth — think of Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken-word poem “Whitey on the Moon,” which juxtaposes the deprivation of the American underclass with the vast resources diverted to space. Scott-Heron’s critique is powerful, but it’s important to remember that he was denouncing an unjust economic system. He wasn’t issuing a timeless condemnation of space pursuits as such. Whether the aims of providing for all and developing outer space are mutually exclusive depends on the political forces on the ground. We might also question whether mining asteroids would be detrimental to our current planet’s environment in the medium term. If we don’t find a renewable way to blast off into outer space, the exploitation of these resources could lead to an intensification of, not a move away from, the fossil-fuel economy. If the environmental impact of space mining turns out to be large, it would be analogous to fracking — a technological development that gives us access to new resources, but with devastating ecological side effects — and ought to be opposed on similar grounds. On the other hand, some speculate that mining the Moon’s Helium-3 reserves, for example, could provide an abundant source of clean energy. The terrestrial environmental impact of space activity remains an open question that must be explored before we stake our hopes on the economic development of outer space. Philosophers have suggested that we might have ethical duties to preserve the “natural” states of celestial bodies. Others fear that our activities might unknowingly wipe out alien microbial life. We should remain sensitive to the aesthetic and cultural value of outer space, as well as the potential for extinction and the exhaustion of resources misleadingly proclaimed to be limitless. But if the Left rejects space on these grounds we abandon its fate to the will of private interests. These concerns shouldn’t cause us to write off space altogether — rather, they should motivate us even more to fight for the careful, democratic use of celestial resources for the benefit of all. There is also reason to be cautiously optimistic about extending economic activity to outer space. For one, the resources there — whether platinum-group metals useful in electronics, or fuels that could be central to the semi-independent functioning of an outer space economy — have the potential to raise our standards of living. Imagine, a superabundance of asteroid metals that are scarce on Earth, like platinum, driving the sort of automation that could expand output and reduce the need to work. Of course, there’s nothing inevitable about the benefits of productivity gains being distributed widely, as we’ve seen in the United States over the past forty years. This is a problem not limited to space, and the myth of the “final frontier” must not distract us from the already existing problems of wealth and income distribution on Earth. While the industrialization of the solar system isn’t a panacea for all economic ills, it does offer a significant organizing opportunity, since it will force a confrontation over the future of the vast celestial commons. The democratic possibilities of such a struggle have been recognized before: one conservative American citizens’ group in the 1970s called a progressive UN space treaty a “vital component of Third World demands for massive redistribution of wealth so as ultimately to equate the economic positions of the two hemispheres.” Many in the 1970s identified the egalitarian potential in the development of outer space, and the Left must not overlook it today. Back to the Future One of the Group of 77’s major goals was to apply some of the redistributive functions of the welfare state on a global scale. In 1974, that coalition issued a “Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order,” which called for a fairer system of global trade and resource distribution, one that could alleviate historical inequality. One of the battlegrounds for the Group of 77 was the negotiation over extraterrestrial property rights. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, signed by over ninety countries in the heat of the first sprint to the moon, rejected the notion that celestial bodies fell under the legal principle of res nullius — meaning that outer space was empty territory that could be claimed for a nation through occupation. It forbade the “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means” of outer space. But the treaty was not just restrictive. It also had a positive requirement for extraterrestrial conduct: “The exploration and use of outer space,” it declared, “shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.” However, nobody knew what this would mean in practice: was it a call for egalitarian economics, or an empty proclamation of liberal benevolence? Complicating matters, it was unclear whether the extraction and sale of natural resources from outer space fell under the category of “appropriation,” which had been forbidden. And what exactly was this benefit to all countries that our outer space pursuits were supposed to bring? How would its distribution be enforced? Which interpretation would win out was more a question of political power than of esoteric legal maneuvers. The Group of 77 took an activist approach to these issues, proposing amendments to the Outer Space Treaty regime that would spread the economic benefits of the celestial commons to less developed countries that did not have the resources to get to space, let alone mine it. Thus in 1970, the Argentine delegate to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space proposed to legally designate outer space and its resources “the common heritage of mankind.” First applied in negotiations over maritime law a few years earlier, the “common heritage” concept was intended to give legal grounding to the peaceful international governance of the commons. As an alternative to the laissez-faire approach advocated by many private interests, the “common heritage” principle also provided a legal framework for the democratic distribution of revenues derived from the international commons. In 1973, the Indian delegation to the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space tried to put this idea into celestial practice, proposing an amendment to the Outer Space Treaty that called for equitable sharing of space benefits, particularly with developing countries. The Brazilian delegate to the committee summarized the group’s position: “It does not seem justifiable . . . that space activities . . . should evolve in a climate of total laissez-faire, which would conceal under the cloak of rationality new ways for an abusive exercise of power by those who exert control over technology.” Despite opposition from both the Soviet Union and the United States, the final draft of this new outer space agreement included a version of the “common heritage of mankind” doctrine. When the finalized treaty was brought to the US in 1979 for ratification, business groups balked. The vision of egalitarian galactic democracy suggested by the document was rightly seen as contrary to narrow American interests. The United Technologies Corporation, a designer and manufacturer of aircrafts and other heavy machinery (including the Black Hawk helicopter) took out a large advertisement in the Washington Post and a number of other newspapers, warning that the treaty would establish an “OPEC-like monopoly, require mandatory transfer of technology, and impose high international taxes on profits as a way of shifting wealth from the developed to the less developed countries.” The president of the corporation, Alexander Haig, also testified against the treaty in Congress in 1979, warning that “the common heritage concept expressed in the treaty underlies Third World efforts directed at a fundamental redistribution of global wealth.” Haig was hired as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state in 1981, and political opposition to the bill forced NASA’s chief counsel to abandon defense of the treaty. In the end, the Moon Treaty, as the 1979 document came to be known, failed to gain more than a few signatories, leaving open the question of how the benefits of outer space were to be shared. In 1988, a different coalition of developing countries added the question of space benefits to the UN outer space committee’s agenda. But they failed to gain traction, and by 1993 they had to concede, as two long-time delegates to the outer space committee put it, that “their attempt at a redistributive revolution in international space cooperation had failed.” The conversation had shifted from the distribution of economic benefits to a narrower emphasis on international scientific coordination and development aid. This retreat culminated in a 1996 declaration that limited the interpretation of the “benefit” clause of the Outer Space Treaty to vague promises to help less developed countries improve their space technologies. The ultimate failure of the Moon Treaty was representative of broader developments in international politics, as the influence of the Group of 77 declined. The fact that the structural adjustment policies of the Washington Consensus won out over the Third World’s redistributive goals was the result of contingent factors — the oil shock’s exacerbation of debt crises, for instance — but it also indicated the limits of the power the Group of 77 had wielded in the first place. In October 2014, the UN outer space committee issued a press release summarizing its most recent session. Its headline: “Outer Space Benefits Must Not Be Allowed to Widen Global Gap between Economic, Social Inequality, Fourth Committee Told.” Despite paying lip service to its past concerns, the outer space committee now emphasizes equal access, voluntary technology transfers, and modest development aid over the direct redistributive approach it took in the 1970s. This shift from struggling for equality of outcome to equality of opportunity, with no accountability mechanism in place to ensure even the latter, represents a striking regression. The egalitarian dreams of the “revolution of the colonized” in the UN, as it was called at the time, have been forgotten. The Empire Strikes Back Recent US plans for outer space development, shaped overwhelmingly by Silicon Valley’s intuitions and capital, stand in stark contrast to the futuristic democratic dreams of the Group of 77. The most prominent of these entrepreneurial visions has been Elon Musk’s plan to colonize Mars. For now, international law seems to unequivocally forbid territorial claims on Mars and other celestial bodies. The legal status of resource extraction, on the other hand, remains an open question. A vocal group of entrepreneurs is hoping to set a precedent for the private appropriation of natural resources from asteroids, without internationally redistributive obligations. Planetary Resources, an asteroid-mining company whose backers include Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and James Cameron, plans to launch satellites to prospect for valuable asteroids in the next two years. Another US firm, Deep Space Industries, will launch exploratory satellites as soon as next year. These entrepreneurs hope to extract the valuable platinum-group metals, essential for manufacturing electronics, that are rare on Earth. Sensationalist articles on space mining will tell you about an asteroid worth $20 trillion. Investors also believe that asteroids might provide water that could be broken down into oxygen and hydrogen in space, yielding air for astronauts and fuel for their ships. This could facilitate a dramatic acceleration in the economic development of outer space. The CEO of Deep Space Industries said he hopes asteroids near Earth will be “like the Iron Range of Minnesota was for the Detroit car industry last century — a key resource located near where it was needed. In this case, metals and fuel from asteroids can expand the in-space industries of this century. That is our strategy.” Another entrepreneur called the industrialization of outer space the “biggest wealth-creation opportunity in modern history.” Before this value can be generated, however, the legal wrinkles have to be ironed out. And so in the summer of 2014, the ASTEROIDS Act was introduced in the House of Representatives to “promote the right of United States commercial entities to explore and utilize resources from asteroids in outer space, in accordance with the existing international obligations of the United States, free from harmful interference, and to transfer or sell such resources.” The legislation was intended to clarify US interpretations of international space law, explicitly granting American companies the right to extract asteroid resources and bring them to market. The conclusion of Congress’s last session means that the bill will have to be reintroduced for it to move forward, and it is uncertain exactly when and how this will happen. But its appearance marked another clear attempt to unilaterally push international norms toward the free extraction of outer space resources, with limited democratic responsibilities attached — and it will not be the last. Joanne Gabrynowicz, editor emerita of the Journal of Space Law, said that an adviser to Planetary Resources had drafted the bill. Deep Space Industries also sent a letter supporting it directly to the space subcommittee of the House of Representatives. Moreover, Congressman Bill Posey, a cosponsor of the act, represents Florida, a state that Gabrynowicz pointed out has recently been forced to try to attract commercial space business — a direct response to the economic hardship caused by the decommissioning NASA’s space shuttle program. Such extraterrestrial special interests will no doubt continue to exert legislative pressure. In addition to asteroids, companies are investing millions in mining the moon, despite legal uncertainties. One such company, Moon Express, has already received a $10 million data-sharing contract from NASA. One of that company’s founders, a former dot-com billionaire, told the Los Angeles Times: There is strong legal precedent and consensus of “finders, keepers” for resources that are liberated through private investment, and the same will be true on the moon. You don’t have to own land to have ownership of resources you unlock from it. Moon Express will use existing precedents of peaceful presence and exploration set by the US government forty years ago. This redeployment of the finders-keepers principle is anathema to the redistributive regime imagined by the Group of 77. Private companies like Planetary Resources and Moon Express, with support from the federal government, are betting not only on the viability of space industrialization, but also on their ability to push through a legal regime that will validate their property claims on their terms. But the universalization of laissez-faire is not inevitable. Final Frontier Thesis The history of the Moon Treaty serves as a reminder that outer space is not just a screen onto which we project techno-utopian fantasies or existential anxieties about the infinite void. It has been, and will continue to be, a site of concrete struggle over economic power. The politics of the present are undoubtedly different from those of the 1970s. The egalitarian project of the Group of 77 has given way to BRICS-style market liberalism. Global capital has gained power where international labor efforts have stagnated. Domestic inequalities have skyrocketed. The rapid proliferation of information technologies has temporarily masked the reality that the future, to paraphrase William Gibson, is not being very evenly distributed. Without international political organization to challenge galactic market fundamentalism, a twenty-first century space odyssey could mean the concentration of even more wealth and income in the hands of a few powerful corporations and the most technologically advanced countries. At the same time, and for the same reasons, the prospect of preserving the final frontier as a celestial commons presents an opportunity to fight for a more democratic political economy. Sharing the benefits of the celestial commons is key to expanding democracy to a galactic scale. One time-tested means of distributing the benefits of natural-resource extraction universally is the sovereign wealth fund, which Alaska uses to deliver oil revenue to its residents. As an international commons, outer space offers an opportunity to experiment with such redistributive mechanisms beyond the traditional confines of the nation-state. Organizing around an issue of such scale may seem utopian, but it’s also necessary. From regulating capital to mitigating climate change, the problems that confront us are inherently global in scope and require commensurate strategies. At the very least, the global left ought to demand the creation of an independent Galactic Wealth Fund to manage the proceeds of outer space resources on behalf of all human beings. At first, it would amount to little, divided up among all of us. But as the space economy grows relative to the terrestrial one, social dividends from the Galactic Wealth Fund could provide the basis for a truly universal basic income. This is just one component of a broader platform for galactic democracy that must be developed collectively. Extraterrestrial economic justice — not just shiny technological advances — will be central to any truly egalitarian politics in the twenty-first century. It’s time to start building a democratic futurism.
Plan The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust. Thus, the plan. Plan text: Outer space ought to be recognized as a global commons as per the Goehring card. Goehring describes but does not advocate treating space in this way. Goehring 6/3 - John S. Goehring B.A., University of California, Berkeley; J.D., Tulane Law School; LL.M., McGill University, Institute of Air and Space Law) is a space and international law attorney for the Department of Defense and a judge advocate in the United States Air Force Reserve, “Why Isn’t Outer Space a Global Commons?” Journal of National Security Law and Policy. Vol. 11:573. (June 3, 2021).https://jnslp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Why_Isnt_Outer_Space_a_Global_Commons_2.pdf AT B. Global Commons as a Constraining Concept In an economic context, as opposed to a military or geopolitical context, “global commons” is typically used to convey a constraining concept. The concept of a “commons” may be thought of as constraining because it is often associated with notions of shared ownership, public governance, or limitations on use. Whether these constraints are viewed positively or negatively is a subjective assessment. The constraining concept is more complicated than the enabling concept because it can reflect two distinct meanings. This is likely a function of its history. “The ‘commons,’ of course, has a long historical and intellectual lineage ranging from the enclosure movement in England, to Garret Hardin’s famous Tragedy of the Commons parable, to Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel-prize winning work on governing common pool resources,” observe Professors Foster and Iaione.30 Applying rational-choice theory, Hardin postulated that individual actors “automatically tend to over-exploit and plunder common-pool resources that are freely available to everyone.”31 The only possible solution to this dilemma, according to Hardin, was “the enclosure of resources through private property, or, failing that, public regulation.”32 Ostrom’s work later “turned Hardin’s conventional wisdom upside down: complex socio-ecological systems (in which goods are extractable and beneficiaries are hard to exclude) can prove to be sustainable resource domains granted that its stakeholders adopt a polycentric and self-regulated mode of governance.”33 As this brief summary suggests, one meaning of “commons” is simply to describe a category of goods.34 This usage was typical prior to Ostrom’s influence.35 In this meaning, a common is a resource to which access is shared, such as an open hunting ground. Some common resources may offer more than one type of benefit. For example, a hunting ground may offer open space for recreation, game to hunt, and trees for building. Some common resources may be subtractable, meaning that use of the resource subtracts from the ability of others to use the resource, while others remain plentiful. Describing a resource in this manner, as a common resource, does not necessarily imply any particular property regime or use limitations.36 A common hunting ground, for instance, may be publicly owned or privately owned. Ostrom helped popularize the term “common pool resource” to describe this general category of resources.37 As Dr. Tepper argues, “it is crucial to differentiate between resources and the legal regime that governs them.”38 This is because the term “global commons” – or simply “commons” – can also be used in an economic sense to refer to a form of collective ownership and governance rather than to the economic goods themselves.39 As Professors Cogolati and Woulters observe, “under Ostrom’s influence, the commons have become more closely connected with the collective self-governance and participatory mechanisms they imply, than with the strict category of (rivalrous and non-excludable) economic goods they used to refer to.”40 This may account for the notion held by some that “the commons is less a description of the resource and its characteristics and more of a normative claim to the resource” (emphasis original).41 Used in this way, a commons is a category of property rights based on collective ownership.42 Put simply, “commons” is sometimes used to refer to common property, meaning a resource with more than one owner, and which therefore should be governed collectively. This notion of a commons is sometimes associated with the common heritage of mankind concept, particularly in the context of outer space. As expressed in Article 11(3) of the 1979 Moon Agreement, the common heritage of mankind concept creates a new type of territorial status in which the moon and celestial bodies “are not only in themselves not subject to national appropriation in a territorial sense, but the fruits and resources of which are also deemed to be the property of mankind at large,” according to Professor Cheng.43 This principle, as characterized by Professor Christol, not only “protects the proposition what sic given areas and their resources are open to inclusive use and that there may not be exclusive use,” but also “goes farther: it asserts that there must be a sharing of the benefits and of the values derived from the indicated commons.”44 In other words, status as the common heritage of mankind does not permit full private property rights in space resources. It should be noted that the concept of the common heritage of mankind is not limited to the outer space domain. In 1970, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution declaring “the sea-bed and ocean floor, and the subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (hereinafter referred to as the area), as well as the resources of the area, are the common heritage of mankind.”45 Years later – after the completion of the Moon Agreement – this principle was codified in Article 136 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).46 Importantly, while the area is the common heritage of mankind according to the Convention, the high seas above the area remains free.47 Hence, some may refer to the high seas as a global commons (in the enabling sense), while others may refer to the deep sea bed as a global commons (in the constraining sense) – a clear example of why the term is fraught with misunderstanding. While the concept of common heritage of the seabed and of the Moon and other celestial bodies are linked, the Moon Agreement declares that the content of the common heritage of mankind concept as it applies to States Parties “finds its expression in the provisions of this Agreement” and nowhere else.48 In general, the concept “lacks a precise definition” but “basically wishes to convey the idea that management, exploitation and distribution of the natural resources of the area in question are matters to be decided upon by the international community and are not to be left to the initiative and discretion of individual States and their nationals.”49 The United States has not signed the Moon Agreement and rejects the notion that outer space resources are the common heritage of mankind, a position clearly reiterated in Executive Order 13914.50 The last of the five international space treaties to have been negotiated in the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), the Moon Agreement is regarded as a failed treaty with only 18 nations having signed on, none of which is China, Russia, or the United States, the three most prominent space-faring States.51 VISITED STATUS OF INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS RELATING TO ACTIVITIES IN OUTER SPACE, UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR OUTER SPACE AFFAIRS, https://perma.cc/8VA5-4UW8 (last July 11, 2020). The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, by contrast, has over 100 States Parties.52 Context is essential for discerning the distinction between the constraining concept and the enabling concept. By themselves, “global commons” or “commons” do not necessarily convey one concept or the other. Describing a resource as a “global commons” in an economic context implies a focus on an open access resource and the consumption of that resource; it suggests a resource allocation problem in need of a solution and inevitably invites questions about ownership. In contrast, referring to a global commons in a military or geopolitical context implies a focus on the use of an open access domain and, when used accurately, the lack of ownership is a settled question. Indeed, the distinction between a focus on a thing (res) itself and a focus on the right to use and explore a domain is among the reasons the term “res communis” is not interchangeable with “global commons” when used in a military or geopolitical sense.53 Solvency Treating space as a commons solves orbital debris. States already agree to a limited regime of this type. Silverstein and Panda ‘3/9 - Benjamin Silverstein research analyst for the Space Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MA, International Relations, Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs BA, International Affairs, George Washington University and Ankit Panda Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. AB, Princeton University, “Space Is a Great Commons. It’s Time to Treat It as Such.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Web). March 9, 2021. Accessed Dec. 13, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/09/space-is-great-commons.-it-s-time-to-treat-it-as-such-pub-84018 AT The failure to manage Earth orbits as a commons undermines safety and predictability, exposing space operators to growing risks such as collisions with other satellites and debris. The long-standing debris problem has been building for decades and demands an international solution.¶ Competing states need to coalesce behind a commons-based understanding of Earth orbits to set the table for a governance system to organize space traffic and address rampant debris. New leadership in the United States can spur progress on space governance by affirming that Earth orbits are a great commons. So far, President Joe Biden and his administration have focused on major space projects, but a relatively simple policy declaration that frames Earth orbits as a great commons can support efforts to negotiate space governance models for issues like debris mitigation and remediation. The Biden administration can set the stage to pursue broad space policy goals by establishing a consensus among states, particularly those with the most invested in Earth orbits, that space is a great commons.¶ THE PRESSING NEED FOR SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ The Earth orbits that provide the majority of benefits to states and commercial ventures represent only a tiny fraction of outer space as a whole. Competition for the limited volume of these Earth orbits is especially fierce since two satellites cannot be in the same place at the same time and not all orbits are equally useful for all missions. The number of objects residing in Earth orbits is now at an all-time high, with most new objects introduced into orbits at altitudes of between 400 and 700 kilometers above sea level. Millions of pieces of debris in Earth orbits pose a threat to continuing space operations. For instance, the final U.S. space shuttle missions faced 1-in-300 odds of losing a space vehicle or crew member to orbital debris or micrometeoroid impacts.¶ Collisions with fragments of orbital litter as small as a few millimeters across can ruin satellites and end missions. Current technologies cannot track all of these tiny pieces of debris, leaving space assets at the mercy of undetectable, untraceable, and unpredictable pieces of space junk. Some researchers have determined that the debris population in low Earth orbit is already self-sustaining, meaning that collisions between space objects will produce debris more rapidly than natural forces, like atmospheric drag, can remove it from orbit.¶ States—namely the United States, Russia, China, and India—have exacerbated this debris accumulation trend by testing kinetic anti-satellite capabilities or otherwise purposefully fragmenting their satellites in orbit. These states, along with the rest of the multilateral disarmament community, are currently at an impasse on establishing future space governance mechanisms that can address the debris issue. A portion of this impasse may be attributable to disparate views of the nature of outer space in the international context. Establishing a clear view among negotiating parties that Earth orbits should be treated as a great commons would establish a basis for future agreements that reduce debris-related risks.¶ Beyond debris-generating, kinetic anti-satellite weapons tests, revolutionary operating concepts challenge existing space traffic management practices. For instance, commercial ventures are planning networks of thousands of satellites to provide low-latency connectivity on Earth and deploying them by the dozens. States are following this trend. Some are considering transitioning away from using single (or few) exquisite assets in higher orbits and toward using many satellites in low Earth orbits. These new operational concepts could lead to an increase in collision risks.¶ Without new governance agreements, problems related to debris, heavy orbital traffic, and harmful interference will only intensify. Debris in higher orbits can persist for a century or more. The costs of adapting to increasingly polluted orbits would be immense, and the opportunity costs would be even higher. For instance, all else being equal, hardening satellites against collisions increases their mass and volume, in turn raising launch costs per satellite. These costs, rooted in a failure to govern space as a commons, will be borne by all space actors, including emerging states and commercial entities.¶ EXISTING FORMS OF SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ A well-designed governance system, founded on a widespread understanding of Earth orbits as a great commons, could temper these risks. Currently, space is not wholly unregulated, but existing regulations are limited both in scope and implementation. Many operators pledge to follow national regulations and international guidelines, but decentralized accountability mechanisms limit enforcement. These guidelines also do not cover the full range of potentially risky behaviors in space. For example, while some space operators can maneuver satellites to avoid collisions, there are no compulsory rules or standards on who has the right of way.¶ At the interstate level, seminal multilateral agreements provide some more narrow guidance on what is and is not acceptable in space. Most famously, the Outer Space Treaty affirms that outer space “shall be free for exploration and use by all states without discrimination of any kind” and that “there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.” Similar concepts of Earth orbits being a great commons arise in subsequent international texts. Agreements like the Liability Convention impose fault-based liability for debris-related collisions in space, but it is difficult to prove fault in this regime in part because satellite owners and operators have yet to codify a standard of care in space, and thus the regime does not clearly disincentivize debris creation in orbit. Other rules of behavior in Earth orbits have been more successful in reducing harmful interference between satellite operations, but even these efforts are limited in scope.¶ States have acceded to supranational regulations of the most limited (and thus most valuable) Earth orbits. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) coordinates, but does not authorize, satellite deployments and operations in geosynchronous orbits and manages radiofrequency spectrum assignments in other regions of space to reduce interference between satellites. These coordination activities are underpinned by the ITU’s constitution, which reminds states “that radio frequencies and any associate orbits . . . are limited natural resources,” indicating a commons-based approach to governing the radiofrequency spectrum. However, the union’s processes are still adapting to new operational realities in low Earth orbit, and these rules were never designed to address issues like debris. States can extend existing models to govern space, but recognition of space as a commons is key. Silverstein and Panda ‘3/9 - Benjamin Silverstein research analyst for the Space Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MA, International Relations, Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs BA, International Affairs, George Washington University and Ankit Panda Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. AB, Princeton University, “Space Is a Great Commons. It’s Time to Treat It as Such.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Web). March 9, 2021. Accessed Dec. 13, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/09/space-is-great-commons.-it-s-time-to-treat-it-as-such-pub-84018 AT BUILDING ON PRIOR MODELS FOR MANAGING COMMONS¶ The histories of other great commons provide lessons on how to manage shared space resources meaningfully and effectively. Efforts to minimize damage to other great commons—like the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution and subsequent protocols—offer guidance on how to resolve compliance issues. Notably, the negotiations on the original convention on air pollution involved, among others, the United States and the Soviet Union. This suggests that states can pursue mutual benefits in areas considered great commons even under competitive conditions. More recent negotiations on the convention’s accompanying protocols show that these competing states can even agree on financing a monitoring regime to support progress.¶ Existing conventions and implementing agreements indicate that states can reach valuable commitments to manage the Earth’s great commons. These governance models protect state interests and preserve the commons themselves. These principles apply to space, but progress on establishing more encompassing space governance principles, enforcement mechanisms, and dispute resolution procedures hinges on states sharing the fundamental view that space is a great commons. Reaching such a consensus is an important first step.¶ New leadership in prominent spacefaring states can revitalize efforts to recognize space as a commons and can build on established legal standards to pursue commons-related principles for governing Earth orbits. Space actors do not have to resolve all their competing interests based on the debris problem. But negligence, mismanagement, or poorly designed rules may spell disaster for Earth orbits. As a more diverse range of actors with space-based interests emerges, no single actor will be able to unilaterally impose universal rules. States can, however, negotiate agreements to manage commons areas to better pursue national objectives. The only way to effectively govern state and commercial space activities is to settle on and abide by common norms or rules.¶ New conventions or regulatory mechanisms for governing Earth orbits will not appear overnight, but states can build toward these goals by clarifying their commitments to treat space as a commons and pursuing governance arrangements that reflect this commitment. New policies in the United States should reflect that Earth orbits are a great commons. Treating space as a commons is key to ethical exploration and human survival. Fisk N.D. - L. A. Fisk President of the Committee on Space Research, chartered by the International Council for Scientific Unions, “Space as a Global Commons,” UNOOSA (Web). ND. Accessed Dec. 13, 2021. https://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/hlf/1st_hlf_Dubai/Presentations/26.pdf AT There is an urgency to consider and act on this issue. • With each passing year, our technological civilization becomes increasingly dependent on the satellites in orbit. • The primal threats to our civilization – global climate change and space weather – can only be understood, and dealt with by using the global perspective of observations from space. • We need to recognize also that we are extending the human presence, whether through robotic spacecraft or eventually with humans, throughout our solar system. And we have a commitment as a civilization to behave responsibility in this endeavor. To protect the environments we will explore, and to protect ourselves against any contamination of our planet that results from this exploration. Space as a Global Commons It follows therefore that, given the centrality of space for the future of our civilization, we need to have policies and practices in place, which are shared by all spacefaring nations, that will allow and encourage each and every nation that desires to and has the capability to use and to explore space for peaceful purposes, to do so. We thus need to recognize, encourage, and enable space as a global commons. A ‘commons’ in the English language is a piece of land owned by and used by all members of a community, as in a pasture used by all residents of a village. Many nations of the world view space as a global commons, a resource not owned by any one nation but crucial to the future of all humankind.
3/19/22
JF - AC - Space Commons v2
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 1 | Opponent: Midlothian AC | Judge: Hall, Harrison AC
Inherency
Ambiguities in the OST that allow private appropriation have kicked off a race to develop space, setting the stage for a debris crisis and the domination of space by unaccountable billionaires. Current laws fail due to lax rules and forum shopping. Dovey 21 Ceridwen Dovey, “Space Exploration At What Price?,” Readers Digest Asia Pacific, 5/1/21. https://www.pressreader.com/australia/readers-digest-asia-pacific/20210501/281487869174485 CT One environmental risk all stakeholders agree on is that posed by space debris. There’s already about 5000 satellites in orbit around Earth, of which roughly 2000 are operational, plus hundreds of millions of tiny pieces of debris. Ninety-five per cent of the stuff in low-Earth orbit is classified as ‘space junk’. More space debris makes accessing space costlier in terms of loss of equipment (and possibly of human life). There’s also the risk of the Kessler effect: a cascade of collisions, to the point where the most useful orbital slots become permanently clogged. “We are in the process of messing up space, and most people don’t realise it because we can’t see it the way we can see fish kills, algal blooms or acid rain,” Michael Krepon, an expert on nuclear and space issues, said in 2015. Maybe we’ll understand only when it’s too late, “when we can’t get our satellite television and our telecommunications ... when we get knocked back to the 1950s”. The current clashes over space are rooted in the nitty-gritty of international space law. There are five multilateral UN treaties governing space, most importantly the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), which has been ratified by 109 states, including all major spacefaring nations. It defines outer space as a global commons, the province of all humanity, free to be used and explored “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries”, “on a basis of equality” and only for “peaceful purposes”. Article II of the OST has become the major sticking point in the new space race. It forbids “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”. No nation can make a territorial claim on the Moon or on any other celestial bodies, such as asteroids. While the OST contains no explicit ban of appropriation by private enterprise, Steven Freeland, a professor specialising in space law at Western Sydney University and Australia’s representative to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), says discussions at the time of the OST negotiations clearly show the states parties, including the US, were “of the opinion that Article II prohibited both public and private appropriation”. Yet this perceived legal uncertainty is the loophole that commercial companies are now exploiting. They’ve actively lobbied for an interpretation of OST Article II in the domestic space law of certain countries, to allow for private ownership of resources extracted from the Moon or other celestial bodies. They argue that, because the OST declares all humans are free to “use” space, companies can exercise this right by mining anywhere they like. They won’t claim ownership of the land itself, but will claim ownership of the resources they mine there. They’ve already had a major win in this regard. The space industry lobby in the US put pressure on members of Congress to reinterpret the US’s obligations under international space law, to become more ‘business friendly’. The outcome was the 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, signed into law by President Obama. Since then, companies owned by US citizens have been given the right to claim ownership of – and sell – any resources they mine off-Earth. Further emboldened by the Trump administration, the “commercial space industry is becoming far more aggressive in how it lobbies for its own interests” in the US, Freeland says. There have been Acts proposed in recent years to enable a corporate space culture of “permissionless innovation”, with little regulatory oversight. In a 2017 speech, President Trump’s space law adviser Scott Pace said, “It bears repeating: outer space is not a ‘global commons’, not the ‘common heritage of mankind’, not ‘ res communis’ area of territory that is not subject to legal title of any state, nor is it a public good.” Even if you accept the US government’s interpretation of Article II – that space resources, but not the territory on which they’re located, can be owned – what happens if someone mines an asteroid out of existence, which is an act of outright appropriation? Should the public trust that companies mining in space will do the right thing? We’re still uncovering the full extent of terrestrial mining companies’ cover-ups. For instance, inhouse scientists at Exxon – now Exxon-Mobil, one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world – knew long ago that burning fossil fuels was responsible for global warming, but they actively buried those findings and discredited climate change science for decades. We live in a world where ‘meta-national’ companies can accrue and exercise more wealth and power than traditional nation-states. Silicon Valley is believed to be becoming more powerful than not only Wall Street but also the US government. Branson and other space billionaires like to reassure the masses they’re “democratising” space: just as plane travel started out for the wealthy and gradually became cheaper, so too will space travel. Yet this conveniently overlooks the fact that railroads, airlines and now space industries have all been heavily subsidised by taxpayers. “When we take a step back and notice that private corporations are often even less accountable than governments, then it seems mistaken to say these decisions have been democratised,” Ryan Jenkins, an emerging sciences ethicist at California Polytechnic State University, says. “They’ve merely been privatised.” Lenient supervision. In 2017, Luxembourg – already a corporate tax haven, complicit in international investor tax avoidance and evasion – followed the US’s lead and passed a space-resources law that allows companies to claim resources they extract from space as private property. Guardian journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian recounted a chilling comment from an American space executive: “We just want to work with a government who won’t get in the way.” Companies anywhere in the world can stake resource claims in space under this new law; their only requirement is an office in Luxembourg. This sets a murky precedent of ‘regulatory forum-shopping’, where companies choose to incorporate in states where they’ll be most leniently supervised. In 2018, a Silicon Valley start-up called Swarm Technologies illegally launched four miniature satellites known as CubeSats into space from India. They’d been refused launch permission in the US due to safety concerns over whether the satellites could be tracked once in orbit. Fined US$900,000 by the US Federal Communications Commission, the company was subsequently given permission to start communicating with its satellites, and launched more CubeSats as part of a payload on a SpaceX rocket that November. In January 2019, the company raised $25 million in venture capital. Space start-ups that are prepared – unlike Swarm Technologies – to play by the rules are nonetheless still proposing to launch their own swarms of hundreds or thousands of satellites into very low orbits around Earth. SpaceX has already launched over 1000 internet-beaming Starlink satellites, aiming to have a constellation of at least 30,000 in orbit eventually. The UK’s Royal Astronomical Society said these satellites will “compromise astronomical research” due to light pollution, and questioned why there’d been no proper consultation with the scientific community before launch.
Advantage 1: Space Debris Increasing space debris levels inevitably set off a chain of collisions. Chelsea Muñoz-Patchen, 19 - (J.D. Candidate at The University of Chicago Law School., "Regulating the Space Commons: Treating Space Debris as Abandoned Property in Violation of the Outer Space Treaty," University of Chicago, 2019, 12-6-2021, https://cjil.uchicago.edu/publication/regulating-space-commons-treating-space-debris-abandoned-property-violation-outer-space)//AW Debris poses a threat to functioning space objects and astronauts in space, and may cause damage to the earth’s surface upon re-entry.29 Much of the small debris cannot be tracked due to its size and the velocity at which it travels, making it impossible to anticipate and maneuver to avoid collisions.30 To remain in orbit, debris must travel at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour.31 At this speed even very small pieces of debris can cause serious damage, threatening a spacecraft and causing expensive damage.32 There are millions of these very small pieces, and thousands of larger ones.33 The small-to-medium pieces of debris “continuously shed fragments like lens caps, booster upper stages, nuts, bolts, paint chips, motor sprays of aluminum particles, glass splinters, waste water, and bits of foil,” and may stay in orbit for decades or even centuries, posing an ongoing risk.34 Debris ten centimeters or larger in diameter creates the likelihood of complete destruction for any functioning satellite with which it collides.35 Large nonfunctional objects remaining in orbit are a collision threat, capable of creating huge amounts of space debris and taking up otherwise useful orbit space.36 This issue is of growing importance as more nations and companies gain the ability to launch satellites and other objects into space.37 From February 2009 through the end of 2010, more than thirty-two collision-avoidance maneuvers were reportedly used to avoid debris by various space agencies and satellite companies, and as of March 2012, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) had to take shelter three times due to close calls with passing debris.38 These maneuvers require costly fuel usage and place a strain on astronauts.39 Furthermore, the launches of some spacecraft have “been delayed because of the presence of space debris in the planned flight paths.”40 In 2011, Euroconsult, a satellite consultant, projected that there would be “a 51 increase in satellites launched in the next decade over the number launched in the past decade.”41 In addition to satellites, the rise of commercial space tourism will also increase the number of objects launched into space and thus the amount of debris.42 The more objects are sent into space, and the more collisions create cascades of debris, the greater the risk of damage to vital satellites and other devices relied on for “weather forecasting, telecommunications, commerce, and national security.”43 The Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines44 were created by UNCOPUOS with input from the IADC and adopted in 2007.45 The guidelines were developed to address the problem of space debris and were intended to “increase mutual understanding on acceptable activities in space.”46 These guidelines are nonbinding but suggest best practices to implement at the national level when planning for a launch. Many nations have adopted the guidelines to some degree, and some have gone beyond what the guidelines suggest.47 While the guidelines do not address existing debris, they do much to prevent the creation of new debris. The Kessler Syndrome is the biggest concern with space debris. The Kessler Syndrome is a cascade created when debris hits a space object, creating new debris and setting off a chain reaction of collisions that eventually closes off entire orbits.48 The concern is that this cascade will occur when a tipping point is reached at which the natural removal rate cannot keep up with the amount of new debris added.49 At this point a collision could set off a cascade destroying all space objects within the orbit.50 In 2011, The National Research Council predicted that the Kessler Syndrome could happen within ten to twenty years.51 Donald J. Kessler, the astrophysicist and NASA scientist who theorized the Kessler Syndrome in 1978, believes this cascade may be a century away, meaning that there is still time to develop a solution.52 Collisions make orbit unusable, causing nuclear war, mass starvation, and economic destruction. Jonson 13 Les Johnson 13, Deputy Manager for NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Co-Investigator for the JAXA T-Rex Space Tether Experiment and PI of NASA's ProSEDS Experiment, Master's Degree in Physics from Vanderbilt University, Popular Science Writer, and NASA Technologist, Frequent Contributor to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Sodety and Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Space Society, the World Future Society, and MENSA, Sky Alert!: When Satellites Fail, p. 9-12 Whatever the initial cause, the result may be the same. A satellite destroyed in orbit will break apart into thousands of pieces, each traveling at over 8 km/sec. This virtual shotgun blast, with pellets traveling 20 times faster than a bullet, will quickly spread out, with each pellet now following its own orbit around the Earth. With over 300,000 other pieces of junk already there, the tipping point is crossed and a runaway series of collisions begins. A few orbits later, two of the new debris pieces strike other satellites, causing them to explode into thousands more pieces of debris. The rate of collisions increases, now with more spacecraft being destroyed. Called the "Kessler Effect", after the NASA scientist who first warned of its dangers, these debris objects, now numbering in the millions, cascade around the Earth, destroying every satellite in low Earth orbit. Without an atmosphere to slow them down, thus allowing debris pieces to bum up, most debris (perhaps numbering in the millions) will remain in space for hundreds or thousands of years. Any new satellite will be threatened by destruction as soon as it enters space, effectively rendering many Earth orbits unusable. But what about us on the ground? How will this affect us? Imagine a world that suddenly loses all of its space technology. If you are like most people, then you would probably have a few fleeting thoughts about the Apollo-era missions to the Moon, perhaps a vision of the Space Shuttle launching astronauts into space for a visit to the International Space Station (ISS), or you might fondly recall the "wow" images taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. In short, you would know that things important to science would be lost, but you would likely not assume that their loss would have any impact on your daily life. Now imagine a world that suddenly loses network and cable television, accurate weather forecasts, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation, some cellular phone networks, on-time delivery of food and medical supplies via truck and train to stores and hospitals in virtually every community in America, as well as science useful in monitoring such things as climate change and agricultural sustainability. Add to this the crippling of the US military who now depend upon spy satellites, space-based communications systems, and GPS to know where their troops and supplies are located at all times and anywhere in the world. The result is a nightmarish world, one step away from nuclear war, economic disaster, and potential mass starvation. This is the world in which we are now perilously close to living. Space satellites now touch our lives in many ways. And, unfortunately, these satellites are extremely vulnerable to risks arising from a half-century of carelessness regarding protecting the space environment around the Earth as well as from potential adversaries such as China, North Korea, and Iran. No government policy has put us at risk. It has not been the result of a conspiracy. No, we are dependent upon them simply because they offer capabilities that are simply unavailable any other way. Individuals, corporations, and governments found ways to use the unique environment of space to provide services, make money, and better defend the country. In fact, only a few space visionaries and futurists could have foreseen where the advent of rocketry and space technology would take us a mere 50 years since those first satellites orbited the Earth. It was the slow progression of capability followed by dependence that puts us at risk. The exploration and use of space began in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. The United States soon followed with Explorer 1. Since then, the nations of the world have launched over 8,000 spacecraft. Of these, several hundred are still providing information and services to the global economy and the world's governments. Over time, nations, corporations, and individuals have grown accustomed to the services these spacecraft provide and many are dependent upon them. Commercial aviation, shipping, emergency services, vehicle fleet tracking, financial transactions, and agriculture are areas of the economy that are increasingly reliant on space. Telestar 1, launched into space in the year of my birth, 1962, relayed the world's first live transatlantic news feed and showed that space satellites can be used to relay television signals, telephone calls, and data. The modern telecommunications age was born. We've come a long way since Telstar; most television networks now distribute most, if not ali, of their programming via satellite. Cable television signals are received by local providers from satellite relays before being sent to our homes and businesses using cables. With 65 of US households relying on cable television and a growing percentage using satellite dishes to receive signals from direct-to-home satellite television providers, a large number of people would be cut off from vital information in an emergency should these satellites be destroyed. And communications satellites relay more than television signals. They serve as hosts to corporate video conferences and convey business, banking, and other commercial information to and from all areas of the planet. The first successful weather satellite was TIROS. Launched in 1960, TIROS operated for only 78 days but it served as the precursor for today's much more long-lived weather satellites, which provide continuous monitoring of weather conditions around the world. Without them, providing accurate weather forecasts for virtually any place on the globe more than a day in advance would be nearly impossible. Figure !.1 shows a satellite image of Hurricane Ivan approaching the Alabama Gulf coast in 2004. Without this type of information, evacuation warnings would have to be given more generally, resulting in needless evacuations and lost economic activity (from areas that avoid landfall) and potentially increasing loss of life in areas that may be unexpectedly hit. The formerly top-secret Corona spy satellites began operation in 1959 and provided critical information about the Soviet Union's military and industrial capabilities to a nervous West in a time of unprecedented paranoia and nuclear risk. With these satellites, US military planners were able to understand and assess the real military threat posed by the Soviet Union. They used information provided by spy satellites to help avert potential military confrontations on numerous occasions. Conversely, the Soviet Union's spy satellites were able to observe the United States and its allies, with similar results. It is nearly impossible to move an army and hide it from multiple eyes in the sky. Satellite information is critical to all aspects of US intelligence and military planning. Spy satellites are used to monitor compliance with international arms treaties and to assess the military activities of countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Figure 1.2 shows the capability of modem unclassified space-based imaging. The capability of the classified systems is presumed to be significantly better, providing much more detail. Losing these satellites would place global militaries on high alert and have them operating, literally, in the blind. Our military would suddenly become vulnerable in other areas as well. GPS, a network of 24-32 satellites in medium-Earth orbit, was developed to provide precise position information to the military, and it is now in common use by individuals and industry. The network, which became fully operational in 1993, allows our armed forces to know their exact locations anywhere in the world. It is used to guide bombs to their targets with unprecedented accuracy, requiring that only one bomb be used to destroy a target that would have previously required perhaps hundreds of bombs to destroy in the pre-GPS world (which, incidentally, has resulted in us reducing our stockpile of non-GPS-guided munitions dramatically). It allows soldiers to navigate in the dark or in adverse weather or sandstorms. Without GPS, our military advantage over potential adversaries would be dramatically reduced or eliminated.
Advantage 2: Corporate Colonialism Tech-billionaires advance a vision of private space colonization as a source of infinite resources to cure society’s ills. This rationalizes unrestrained consumption and replicates the logic of imperialism. Mccormick 21 Ted McCormick writes about the history of science, empire, and economic thought. He has a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and teaches at Concordia University in Montreal. “The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world”. 8-15-2021. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-billionaire-space-race-reflects-a-colonial-mindset-that-fails-to-imagine-a-different-world-165235. Accessed 12-15-2021; marlborough JH It was a time of political uncertainty, cultural conflict and social change. Private ventures exploited technological advances and natural resources, generating unprecedented fortunes while wreaking havoc on local communities and environments. The working poor crowded cities, spurring property-holders to develop increased surveillance and incarceration regimes. Rural areas lay desolate, buildings vacant, churches empty — the stuff of moralistic elegies. ¶Epidemics raged, forcing quarantines in the ports and lockdowns in the streets. Mortality data was the stuff of weekly news and commentary. ¶Depending on the perspective, mobility — chosen or compelled — was either the cause or the consequence of general disorder. Uncontrolled mobility was associated with political instability, moral degeneracy and social breakdown. However, one form of planned mobility promised to solve these problems: colonization. ¶Europe and its former empires have changed a lot since the 17th century. But the persistence of colonialism as a supposed panacea suggests we are not as far from the early modern period as we think. ¶Colonial promise of limitless growth ¶Seventeenth-century colonial schemes involved plantations around the Atlantic, and motivations that now sound archaic. Advocates of expansion such as the English writer Richard Hakluyt, whose Discourse of Western Planting (1584) outlined the benefits of empire for Queen Elizabeth: the colonization of the New World would prevent Spanish Catholic hegemony and provide a chance to claim Indigenous souls for Protestantism. ¶But a key promise was the economic and social renewal of the mother country through new commodities, trades and territory. Above all, planned mobility would cure the ills of apparent overpopulation. Sending the poor overseas to cut timber, mine gold or farm cane would, according to Hakluyt, turn the “multitudes of loiterers and idle vagabonds” that “swarm(ed)” England’s streets and “pestered and stuffed” its prisons into industrious workers, providing raw materials and a reason to multiply. Colonization would fuel limitless growth. ¶As English plantations took shape in Ulster, Virginia, New England and the Caribbean, “projectors” — individuals (nearly always men) who promised to use new kinds of knowledge to radically and profitably transform society — tied mobility to new sciences and technologies. They were inspired as much by English philosopher Francis Bacon’s vision of a tech-centred state in The New Atlantis as by his advocacy of observation and experiment. ¶Discovery and invention ¶The English agriculturalist Gabriel Plattes cautioned in 1639 that “the finding of new worlds is not like to be a perpetual trade.” But many more saw a supposedly vacant America as an invitation to transplant people, plants and machinery. ¶The inventor Cressy Dymock (from Lincolnshire, where fen-drainage schemes were turning wetlands dry) sought support for a “perpetual motion engine” that would plough fields in England, clear forest in Virginia and drive sugar mills in Barbados. Dymock identified private profit and the public good by speeding plantation and replacing costly draught animals with cheaper enslaved labour. Projects across the empire would employ the idle, create “elbow-room,” heal “unnatural divisions” and make England “the garden of the world.” ¶Extraterrestrial exploration ¶Today, the moon and Mars are in projectors’ sights. And the promises billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos make for colonization are similar in ambition to those of four centuries ago. ¶As Bezos told an audience at the International Space Development Conference in 2018: “We will have to leave this planet, and we’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better.” Bezos traces his thinking to Princeton physicist Gerald O’Neill, whose 1974 article “The Colonization of Space” (and 1977 book, The High Frontier) presented orbiting settlements as solutions to nearly every major problem facing the Earth. Bezos echoes O’Neill’s proposal to move heavy industry — and industrial labour — off the planet, rezoning Earth as a mostly residential, green space. A garden, as it were. ¶Musk’s plans for Mars are at once more cynical and more grandiose, in timeline and technical requirements if not in ultimate extent. They center on the dubious possibility of “terraforming” Mars using resources and technologies that don’t yet exist. ¶Musk planned to send the first humans to Mars in 2024, and by 2030, he envisioned breaking ground on a city, launching as many as 100,000 voyages from Earth to Mars within a century. ¶As of 2020, the timeline had been pushed back slightly, in part because terraforming may require bombarding Mars with 10,000 nuclear missiles to start. But the vision – a Mars of thriving crops, pizza joints and “entrepreneurial opportunities,” preserving life and paying dividends while Earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable — remains. Like the colonial company-states of the 17th and 18th centuries, Musk’s SpaceX leans heavily on government backing but will make its own laws on its newly settled planet. ¶A failure of the imagination ¶The techno-utopian visions of Musk and Bezos betray some of the same assumptions as their early modern forebears. They offer colonialism as a panacea for complex social, political and economic ills, rather than attempting to work towards a better world within the constraints of our environment. ¶And rather than facing the palpably devastating consequences of an ideology of limitless growth on our planet, they seek to export it, unaltered, into space. They imagine themselves capable of creating liveable environments where none exist. ¶But for all their futuristic imagery, they have failed to imagine a different world. And they have ignored the history of colonialism on this one. Empire never recreated Eden, but it did fuel centuries of growth based on expropriation, enslavement and environmental transformation in defiance of all limits. We are struggling with these consequences today.
If only wealthy elites can tap the vast resources of outer space, we lock in a permanent and unconscionable inequality. Private space colonization amounts to unchecked exploitation and authoritarian corporate control of future settlements. Spencer ’17 Spencer, Keith A. senior editor at Salon“Against Mars-a-Lago: Why SpaceX's Mars Colonization Plan Should Terrify You.” Salon, Salon.com, Oct. 8 2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/10/08/against-mars-a-lago-why-spacexs-mars-colonization-plan-should-terrify-you/. When CEO Elon Musk announced last month that his aerospace company SpaceX would be sending cargo missions to Mars by 2022 — the first step in his tourism-driven colonization plan — a small cheer went up among space and science enthusiasts. Writing in the New York Post, Stephen Carter called Musk’s vision “inspiring,” a salve for politically contentious times. “Our species has turned its vision inward; our image of human possibility has grown cramped and pessimistic,” Carter wrote: "We dream less of reaching the stars than of winning the next election; less of maturing as a species than of shunning those who are different; less of the blessings of an advanced technological tomorrow than of an apocalyptic future marked by a desperate struggle to survive. Maybe a focus on the possibility of reaching our nearest planetary neighbor will help change all that." The Post editorial reflected a growing media consensus that humankind’s ultimate destiny is the colonization of the solar system — yet on a private basis. American government leaders generally agree with this vision. Obama egged on the privatization of NASA by legislating a policy shift to private commercial spaceflight, awarding government contracts to private companies like SpaceX to shuttle supplies to the International Space Station. “Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to make profit, finds ways to expand humanity,” said Dr. S. Pete Worden, the director of the NASA Ames Research lab, in 2012. And in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Vice President Mike Pence wrote of his ambitions to bring American-style capitalism to the stars: “In the years to come, American industry must be the first to maintain a constant commercial human presence in low-Earth orbit, to expand the sphere of the economy beyond this blue marble,” Pence wrote. One wonders if these luminaries know their history. There has be no instance in which a private corporation became a colonizing power that did not end badly for everyone besides the shareholders. The East India Company is perhaps the finest portent of Musk’s Martian ambitions. In 1765, the East India Company forced the Mughal emperor to sign a legal agreement that would essentially permit their company to become the de facto rulers of Bengal. The East India Company then collected taxes and used its private army, which was over 200,000 strong by the early 19th century, to repress those who got in the way of its profit margins. “It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath,” writes William Dalrymple in the Guardian. “It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history.” The East India Company came to colonize much of the Indian subcontinent. In the modern era, an era in which the right of corporations to do what they want, unencumbered, has become a sacrosanct right in the eyes of many politicians, the lessons of the East India Company seem to have been all but forgotten. As Dalrymple writes: Democracy as we know it was considered an advance over feudalism because of the power that it gave the commoners to share in collective governance. To privately colonize a nation, much less a planet, means ceding governance and control back to corporations whose interest is not ours, and indeed, is always at odds with workers and residents — particularly in a resource-limited environment like a spaceship or the red planet. Even if, as Musk suggests, a private foundation is put in charge of running the show on Mars, their interests will inherently be at odds with the workers and employees involved. After all, a private foundation is not a democracy; and as major philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation illustrate, often do the bidding of their rich donors, and take an important role in ripening industries and regions for exploitation by Western corporations. Yet Mars’ colonization is a bit different than Bengal, namely in that it is not merely underdeveloped; it is undeveloped. How do you start an entirely new economy on a virgin world with no industry? After all, Martian resource extraction and trade with Earth is not feasible; the cost of transporting material across the solar system is astronomical, and there are no obvious minerals on Mars that we don’t already have in abundance on Earth. The only basis for colonization of Mars that Musk can conceive of is one based on tourism: the rich pay an amount — Musk quotes the ticket price at $200,000 if he can get 1 million tourists to pay that — that entitles them to a round-trip ticket. And while they’re on Mars and traveling to it, they luxuriate: Musk has assured that the trip would be “fun.” This is what makes Musk’s Mars vision so different than, say, the Apollo missions or the International Space Station. This isn’t really exploration for humanity’s sake — there’s not that much science assumed here, as there was in the Moon missions. Musk wants to build the ultimate luxury package, exclusively for the richest among us. Musk isn’t trying to build something akin to Matt Damon’s spartan research base in "The Martian." He wants to build Mars-a-Lago. And an economy based on tourism, particularly high-end tourism, needs employees — even if a high degree of automation is assumed. And as I’ve written about before, that means a lot of labor at the lowest cost possible. Imagine signing away years of your life to be a housekeeper in the Mars-a-Lago hotel, with your communications, water, food, energy usage, even oxygen tightly managed by your employer, and no government to file a grievance to if your employer cuts your wages, harasses you, cuts off your oxygen. Where would Mars-a-Lago's employees turn if their rights were impinged upon? Oh wait, this planet is run privately? You have no rights. Musk's vision for Mars colonization is inherently authoritarian. The potential for the existence of the employees of the Martian tourism industry to slip into something resembling indentured servitude, even slavery, cannot be underestimated. We have government regulations for a reason on Earth — to protect us from the fresh horror Musk hopes to export to Mars. If he's considered these questions, he doesn't seem to care; for Musk, the devil's in the technological and financial details. The social and political are pretty uninteresting to him. This is unsurprising; accounts from those who have worked closely with him hint that he, like many CEOs, may be a sociopath. Even as a space enthusiast, I cannot get excited about the private colonization of Mars. You shouldn’t be either. This is not a giant leap for mankind; this is the next great leap in plutocracy. The mere notion that global wealth is so unevenly distributed that a small but sufficient sum of rich people could afford this trip is unsettling, indicative of the era of astonishing economic inequality in which we suffer. Thomas Frank, writing in Harpers, once wrote of a popular t-shirt he sighted while picnicking in a small West Virginia coal town: “Mine it union or keep it in the ground.” The idea, of course, is that the corporations interested in resource extraction do not care whatsoever about their workers’ health, safety, or well-being; the union had their interests at heart, and was able to negotiate for safety, job security, and so on. I’d like to see a similar t-shirt or bumper sticker emerge among scientists and space enthusiasts: “Explore Mars democratically, or keep it in the sky.”
Neoliberalism destroys ethics, locks in poverty and exploitation, decimates the environment, and causes war. Werlhof 15 – Claudia, Professor of Political Science/Women's Studies, University Innsbruck (Austria), 2015 (“Neoliberal Globalization: Is There an Alternative to Plundering the Earth?” Global Research, May 25th, Available Online at http://www.globalresearch.ca/neoliberal-globalization-is-there-an-alternative-to-plundering-the-earth/24403) At the center of both old and new economic liberalism lies: Self-interest and individualism; segregation of ethical principles and economic affairs, in other words: a process of ‘de-bedding’ economy from society; economic rationality as a mere cost-benefit calculation and profit maximization; competition as the essential driving force for growth and progress; specialization and the replacement of a subsistence economy with profit-oriented foreign trade (‘comparative cost advantage’); and the proscription of public (state) interference with market forces.3 Where the new economic liberalism outdoes the old is in its global claim. Today’s economic liberalism functions as a model for each and everyone: all parts of the economy, all sectors of society, of life/nature itself. As a consequence, the once “de-bedded” economy now claims to “im-bed” everything, including political power. Furthermore, a new twisted “economic ethics” (and with it a certain idea of “human nature”) emerges that mocks everything from so-called do-gooders to altruism to selfless help to care for others to a notion of responsibility.4 This goes as far as claiming that the common good depends entirely on the uncontrolled egoism of the individual and, especially, on the prosperity of transnational corporations. The allegedly necessary “freedom” of the economy – which, paradoxically, only means the freedom of corporations – hence consists of a freedom from responsibility and commitment to society. The maximization of profit itself must occur within the shortest possible time; this means, preferably, through speculation and “shareholder value”. It must meet as few obstacles as possible. Today, global economic interests outweigh not only extra-economic concerns but also national economic considerations since corporations today see themselves beyond both community and nation.5 A “level playing field” is created that offers the global players the best possible conditions. This playing field knows of no legal, social, ecological, cultural or national “barriers”.6 As a result, economic competition plays out on a market that is free of all non-market, extra-economic or protectionist influences – unless they serve the interests of the big players (the corporations), of course. The corporations’ interests – their maximal growth and progress – take on complete priority. This is rationalized by alleging that their well-being means the well-being of small enterprises and workshops as well. The difference between the new and the old economic liberalism can first be articulated in quantitative terms: after capitalism went through a series of ruptures and challenges – caused by the “competing economic system”, the crisis of capitalism, post-war “Keynesianism” with its social and welfare state tendencies, internal mass consumer demand (so-called Fordism), and the objective of full employment in the North. The liberal economic goals of the past are now not only euphorically resurrected but they are also “globalized”. The main reason is indeed that the competition between alternative economic systems is gone. However, to conclude that this confirms the victory of capitalism and the “golden West” over “dark socialism” is only one possible interpretation. Another – opposing – interpretation is to see the “modern world system” (which contains both capitalism and socialism) as having hit a general crisis which causes total and merciless competition over global resources while leveling the way for investment opportunities, i.e. the valorization of capital.7 The ongoing globalization of neoliberalism demonstrates which interpretation is right. Not least, because the differences between the old and the new economic liberalism can not only be articulated in quantitative terms but in qualitative ones too. What we are witnessing are completely new phenomena: instead of a democratic “complete competition” between many small enterprises enjoying the freedom of the market, only the big corporations win. In turn, they create new market oligopolies and monopolies of previously unknown dimensions. The market hence only remains free for them, while it is rendered unfree for all others who are condemned to an existence of dependency (as enforced producers, workers and consumers) or excluded from the market altogether (if they have neither anything to sell or buy). About fifty percent of the world’s population fall into this group today, and the percentage is rising.8 Anti-trust laws have lost all power since the transnational corporations set the norms. It is the corporations – not “the market” as an anonymous mechanism or “invisible hand” – that determine today’s rules of trade, for example prices and legal regulations. This happens outside any political control. Speculation with an average twenty percent profit margin edges out honest producers who become “unprofitable”.9 Money becomes too precious for comparatively non-profitable, long-term projects, or projects that only – how audacious! – serve a good life. Money instead “travels upwards” and disappears. Financial capital determines more and more what the markets are and do.10 By delinking the dollar from the price of gold, money creation no longer bears a direct relationship to production”.11 Moreover, these days most of us are – exactly like all governments – in debt. It is financial capital that has all the money – we have none.12 Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances are below average in comparison to speculation – rather: spookulation – wins. The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-for-profit economy and administration, is “slimmed” and its “profitable” parts (“gems”) handed to corporations (privatized). As a consequence, social services that are necessary for our existence disappear. Small and medium private businesses – which, until recently, employed eighty percent of the workforce and provided normal working conditions – are affected by these developments as well. The alleged correlation between economic growth and secure employment is false. When economic growth is accompanied by the mergers of businesses, jobs are lost.13 If there are any new jobs, most are precarious, meaning that they are only available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not enough to make a living.14 This means that the working conditions in the North become akin to those in the South, and the working conditions of men akin to those of women – a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor without union affiliation. This has already been happening since the 1970s in the “Export Processing Zones” (EPZs, “world market factories” or “maquiladoras”), where most of the world’s computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods are produced.15 The EPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of cheap labor.16 The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to armaments is a particularly troubling development.17 It is not only commodity production that is “outsourced” and located in the EPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution, meaning the development of new information and communication technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely due to computerization, also in administrative fields.18 The combination of the principles of “high tech” and “low wage”/”no wage” (always denied by “progress” enthusiasts) guarantees a “comparative cost advantage” in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to “Chinese wages” in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European, Chinese or Indian. The means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially since finance capital – rendered precarious itself – controls asset values ever more aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through the “clearance” of public property and the transformation of formerly public and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector. This concerns primarily fields that have long been (at least partly) excluded from the logic of profit – e.g. education, health, energy or water supply/disposal. New forms of so-called enclosures emerge from today’s total commercialization of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the “commons”, and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc.19 As far as the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing frantic efforts to bring these under private control as well.20 All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a continuation of the history of so-called original accumulation which has expanded globally, in accordance with to the motto: “Growth through expropriation!”21 Most people have less and less access to the means of production, and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction of the welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely on the community to provide for them in times of need. Our existence relies exclusively on private, i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less reliable than public services. (It is a myth that the private always outdoes the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by the colonial South. The old claim that the South will eventually develop into the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the South. We are witnessing the latest form of “development”, namely, a world system of underdevelopment.22 Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand.23 This might even dawn on “development aid” workers soon. It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”) in the household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid “housewifized” work outside.24 Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the work.25 Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution, one of today’s biggest global industries.26 This illustrates two things: a) how little the “emancipation” of women actually leads to “equal terms” with men; and b) that “capitalist development” does not imply increased “freedom” in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long time.27 If the latter were the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism once it reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely. Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist in the “world system.”28 The authoritarian model of the “Export Processing Zones” is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – from the bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing. It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of colonialism but, to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new “colonization of the world”29 points back to the beginnings of the “modern world system” in the “long 16th century”, when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation and colonial transformation allowed for the rise and “development” of Europe.30 The so-called “children’s diseases” of modernity keep on haunting it, even in old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernity’s latest stage. They are expanding instead of disappearing. Where there is no South, there is no North; where there is no periphery, there is no center; where there is no colony, there is no – in any case no “Western” – civilization.31 Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly becoming a corporate colony (particularly of German corporations). This, however, does not keep it from being an active colonizer itself, especially in the East.32 Social, cultural, traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global resources that we still have – natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools – have turned into objects of utilization. Rapid ecological destruction through depletion is the consequence.If one makes more profit by cutting down trees than by planting them, then there is no reason not to cut them.33 Neither the public nor the state interferes, despite global warming and the obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining rain forests will irreversibly destroy the earth’s climate – not to mention the many other negative effects of such actions.34 Climate, animal, plants, human and general ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of the corporations – no matter that the rain forest is not a renewable resource and that the entire earth’s ecosystem depends on it. If greed, and the rationalism with which it is economically enforced, really was an inherent anthropological trait, we would have never even reached this day. The commander of the Space Shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning”. She meant the Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more rain clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo’s natural resources that are the reason for the wars that plague the region today. After all, one needs diamonds and coltan for mobile phones. Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities, i.e. everything becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which truly means liquidation, the transformation of all into liquid money). In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost-intensive and preferably “wageless” commodity production. The objective is to transform everyone and everything into commodities, including life itself.35 We are racing blindly towards the violent and absolute conclusion of this “mode of production”, namely total capitalization/liquidation by “monetarization”.36 We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of the market – we are witnessing what can be described as “market fundamentalism”. People believe in the market as if it was a god. There seems to be a sense that nothing could ever happen without it. Total global maximized accumulation of money/capital as abstract wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity. A “free” world market for everything has to be established – a world market that functions according to the interests of the corporations and capitalist money. The installment of such a market proceeds with dazzling speed. It creates new profit possibilities where they have not existed before, e.g. in Iraq, Eastern Europe or China. One thing remains generally overlooked: the abstract wealth created for accumulation implies the destruction of nature as concrete wealth. The result is a “hole in the ground” and next to it a garbage dump with used commodities, outdated machinery and money without value.37 However, once all concrete wealth (which today consists mainly of the last natural resources) will be gone, abstract wealth will disappear as well. It will, in Marx’s words, “evaporate”. The fact that abstract wealth is not real wealth will become obvious, and so will the answer to the question of which wealth modern economic activity has really created. In the end it is nothing but monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually or on accounts) that constitutes a monoculture controlled by a tiny minority. Diversity is suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive. And really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production nor money? The nihilism of our economic system is evident. The whole world will be transformed into money – and then it will disappear. After all, money cannot be eaten. What no one seems to consider is the fact that it is impossible to re-transform commodities, money, capital and machinery into nature or concrete wealth. It seems that underlying all “economic development” is the assumption that “resources”, the “sources of wealth”,38 are renewable and everlasting – just like the “growth” they create.39 The notion that capitalism and democracy are one is proven a myth by neoliberalism and its “monetary totalitarianism”.40 The primacy of politics over economy has been lost. Politicians of all parties have abandoned it. It is the corporations that dictate politics. Where corporate interests are concerned, there is no place for democratic convention or community control. Public space disappears. The res publica turns into a res privata, or – as we could say today – a res privata transnationale (in its original Latin meaning, privare means “to deprive”). Only those in power still have rights. They give themselves the licenses they need, from the “license to plunder” to the “license to kill”.41 Those who get in their way or challenge their “rights” are vilified, criminalized and to an increasing degree defined as “terrorists” or, in the case of defiant governments, as “rogue states” – a label that usually implies threatened or actual military attack, as we can see in the cases of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe Syria and Iran in the near future. U.S. President Bush had even spoken of the possibility of “preemptive” nuclear strikes should the U.S. feel endangered by weapons of mass destruction.42 The European Union did not object.43 Neoliberalism and war are two sides of the same coin.44 Free trade, piracy and war are still “an inseparable three” – today maybe more so than ever. War is not only “good for the economy” but is indeed its driving force and can be understood as the “continuation of economy with other means”.45 War and economy have become almost indistinguishable.46 Wars about resources – especially oil and water – have already begun.47 The Gulf Wars are the most obvious examples. Militarism once again appears as the “executor of capital accumulation” – potentially everywhere and enduringly.48 Human rights and rights of sovereignty have been transferred from people, communities and governments to corporations.49 The notion of the people as a sovereign body has practically been abolished. We have witnessed a coup of sorts. The political systems of the West and the nation state as guarantees for and expression of the international division of labor in the modern world system are increasingly dissolving.50 Nation states are developing into “periphery states” according to the inferior role they play in the proto-despotic “New World Order”.51 Democracy appears outdated. After all, it “hinders business”.52 The “New World Order” implies a new division of labor that does no longer distinguish between North and South, East and West – today, everywhere is South. An according International Law is established which effectively functions from top to bottom (“top-down”) and eliminates all local and regional communal rights. And not only that: many such rights are rendered invalid both retroactively and for the future.53 The logic of neoliberalism as a sort of totalitarian neo-mercantilism is that all resources, all markets, all money, all profits, all means of production, all “investment opportunities”, all rights and all power belong to the corporations only. To paraphrase Richard Sennett: “Everything to the Corporations!”54 One might add: “Now!” The corporations are free to do whatever they please with what they get. Nobody is allowed to interfere. Ironically, we are expected to rely on them to find a way out of the crisis we are in. This puts the entire globe at risk since responsibility is something the corporations do not have or know. The times of social contracts are gone.55 In fact, pointing out the crisis alone has become a crime and all critique will soon be defined as “terror” and persecuted as such.56 IMF Economic Medicine Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements (which are cynically labeled as “IMF uprisings”), and facilitate the lucrative business of reconstruction.57 In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher introduced neoliberalism in Anglo-America. In 1989, the so-called “Washington Consensus” was formulated. It claimed to lead to global freedom, prosperity and economic growth through “deregulation, liberalization and privatization”. This has become the credo and promise of all neoliberals. Today we know that the promise has come true for the corporations only – not for anybody else. In the Middle East, the Western support for Saddam Hussein in the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, and the Gulf War of the early 1990s, announced the permanent U.S. presence in the world’s most contested oil region. In continental Europe, neoliberalism began with the crisis in Yugoslavia caused by the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF. The country was heavily exploited, fell apart and finally beset by a civil war over its last remaining resources.58 Since the NATO war in 1999, the Balkans are fragmented, occupied and geopolitically under neoliberal control.59 The region is of main strategic interest for future oil and gas transport from the Caucasus to the West (for example the “Nabucco” gas pipeline that is supposed to start operating from the Caspian Sea through Turkey and the Balkans by 2011.60 The reconstruction of the Balkans is exclusively in the hands of Western corporations. All governments, whether left, right, liberal or green, accept this. There is no analysis of the connection between the politics of neoliberalism, its history, its background and its effects on Europe and other parts of the world. Likewise, there is no analysis of its connection to the new militarism. Plan – Commons (Delimiting and Liability) Since, in a just world, outer space would be treated as a global commons, and a global commons model precludes appropriation by private entries, then the appropriation of outer space by private entries is unjust.
Thus, the plan: States ought to adopt a binding international agreement that bans the appropriation of outer space by private entities by establishing outer space as a global commons subject to regulatory delimiting and global liability. The aff: - solves debris and space colonialism by ensuring the sustainable and equitable use of outer space resources. - prevents circumvention by aligning the interests of state parties - is normal means since it models numerous successful agreements governing all other global commons. Vollmer 20 Sarah Louise Vollmer (St. Mary's University School of Law), “The Right Stuff in Geospace: Using Mutual Coercion to Avoid an Inevitable Prison for Humanity,” 51 ST. MARY'S L.J. 777 (2020). https://commons.stmarytx.edu/thestmaryslawjournal/vol51/iss3/6?utm_source=commons.stmarytx.edu2Fthestmaryslawjournal2Fvol512Fiss32F6andutm_medium=PDFandutm_campaign=PDFCoverPages CT IV. NECESSITY FOR REGULATION TO PRESERVE THE HERITAGE OF MANKIND—A PROPOSAL Conceptually, all persons hold an implied property right in the space commons.111 As such, spacefaring entities and developing nations possess an equitable right to access and use orbital resources.112 But the sui generis nature of geospace presents a paradox requiring a unique regime for the sustainable usage of its resources.113 The international community cannot realize the advantages of the common heritage principle under a property regime because any conceivable assignment would violate the non-appropriation clause or unjustly enrich a particular interest.114 This means that only regulatory solutions can protect the interests inherent in a commons protected for the common heritage of mankind. A. The Motivations for International Compliance The crux of a workable treaty lies in the consent of the parties to the agreement.115 Thereafter, signatories internalize the agreement’s object and purpose into their domestic law, or in the case of international organizations, into an institutional framework.116 To implement a binding international instrument, we must therefore ask the question: Why do nations follow international law,117 and how can we use those behavioral realities to construct a workable framework to ensure geospace survives?118 At the dawn of civilized society, depending on a particular jurisdiction’s values, the laws of nature and morality compelled obedience and social order.119 When nation-states concluded international agreements, it represented the coalescence of the various values-based systems, the overlap of which formed a universal understanding of the law of mankind.120 “The fundamental conceptual boundary between municipal and international law . . . views international law largely in terms of contractual relations, therefore assigning to the ‘sovereign’ a central place in the construction of the two orders.”121 In other words, transnational cooperation operated through balancing the competing autonomy and values of the parties involved. Despite centuries of debate, values systems remain the principal motivating factor of compliance with international law.122 Effective regulatory regimes must, therefore, strike at the heart of what nation-states value the most, which is often related to national security.123 When entering an international agreement, whether or not a nation-state will ratify it informs us of the value a nation-state places on the instrument’s subject matter. That value equates to the utility a nation-state places on certain allowances or prohibitions.124 Incorporating these motivating factors with Hardin’s regulatory solution, any freedoms infringed upon must manifest a higher utility than currently realized. If COPUOS proposes a protocol for sustainable uses of space, the provisions must either have a negligible effect on the global community’s perceived utility of space access or substantially increase that utility. Assuming the propositioned regulatory scheme aligns with the values system of each nation-state, the probability of internalizing such regulations through domestic codification is high. To ascertain the interests of nation-states, we must look to the factors motivating current space utilization. Routine access to space undeniably aids our technological advancement. The ISS’s antigravity environment provides unique conditions to study medicine.125 Satellites provide real-time tracking of environmental conditions and transmit crucial information for disaster recovery planning.126 Space telescopes track objects with the potential to cause the extinction of life of Earth.127 Free from the veil of our hazy atmosphere, satellites can produce better imagery and ascertain the composition of potential resource deposits on celestial bodies.128 And simply receiving satellite imagery of our planet forces us to confront the realities of our fragile existence. These benefits signify the tangible realization of the OST’s object and purpose, which flow to all members of the global community.129 If we do not begin active decontamination and mitigation of space debris, the utility of geospace will cease to exist. Imagining our existence without these advances is a potent method to stress the criticality of unabated pollution in geospace. B. Existing Proposals Legal scholars have formulated several frameworks to mitigate space debris. Some recommend implementing a market-share liability regime, which assigns liability according to the volume of each nation-states’ exploits.130 Opponents of this construction rightfully highlight the inequities inherent in such a scheme. Considering the United States, Russia, and China make up the bulk of spacefaring activity, market-share liability would unduly burden these nations, and coerce a categorical exit from the space industry or a repeat of the Moon Treaty.131 Another scholar advocates for an environmental law approach, asserting that the space commons would benefit from a protocol closely mirroring the Madrid Protocol.132 While prospective applications of such a model could prevent additional accumulations, it would not feasibly abate the current collection of debris.133 The strengths of Mary Button’s mitigation proposal lie in the binding nature of the Madrid Protocol and compulsory environmental impact requirements. And though it advocates for a more collaborative conference mechanism, rather than the strict unanimous consent required of UNCOPUOS’s resolutions, it still shies away from compulsory requirements for active debris removal. Along with the Antarctic Treaty (ATS), the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) also served as a model for the Corpus Juris Spatialis. But oddly, the law of salvage was omitted from the treaties. Unlike abandoned objects at sea, once a nation-state places an object into space, ownership exists in perpetuity. Sandra Drago addressed removing the OST’s property-in-perpetuity mechanism134 so as to permit the active salvage of inoperable satellites.135 Drago’s proposal is vital to any mitigation framework. But while this removes a substantial bar currently restricting debris removal, it does not address free-riding, and spacefaring enterprises are free to choose more lucrative space activities other than salvage operations.136 C. A Coercive Proposal Mutual coercion lies at the core of Hardin’s solution.137 To summarize, law-abiding citizens make concessions to regulatory social constructs in the interest of conserving some utility otherwise lost.138 The coercive element lies in relinquishing one’s ability to exploit some freedom, the detriment of which cannot be realized at that moment in time.139 Conceding to a regime that tempers free exploitation of the commons allows everyone to benefit from the positive externalities of individual usage. Equated to space, nation-states currently concede to non-appropriation in the interest of maintaining equitable access. But because of the sui generis nature of geospace, even non-participants receive a benefit from the use of the commons. In effect, beneficiaries are free-riding from the capital investment of spacefaring nations and entities. This informs the structure of the ensuing two-part framework: geospace delimitation and global liability
Geospace Delimitation The history of regulatory delimitation illustrates its effectiveness at balancing the rights of individuals, sovereigns, and mankind. Each instance explained in Part II infra, arose out of public necessity to ensure and protect the maximum utility of the global commons, without the deleteriousness of inhabitability, sovereign interference, or over-exploitation.140 The regimes governing Antarctica, the High Seas, the Atmosphere, and the radio-frequency spectrum evidence that mutually coercive delimitation can honor the common heritage of mankind, without encroaching on the peaceful enjoyment and benefits attributable to these areas. a. Antarctica In the 1950s, there was concern that Antarctica would succumb to Cold War hysteria, becoming a target for international discord and nuclear arms testing.141 In a move to reestablish global scientific exchange, the international scientific community hosted the International Geophysical Year project, and after identifying the potential of Antarctica, sought to protect it from any ruinous power posturing.142 This necessity for regulating permissible activity resulted in the formation of the ATS.143 Subsequent technological advancement revealed mineral deposits, triggering commercial interest in exploiting its natural resources. The threat catalyzed the promulgation of the Madrid Protocol.144 Again, these delimitations did not sever humanity’s utility in Antarctica. Rather, mankind conceded to the prohibition of deleterious usage in the interest of preserving its scientific utility.145 b. The High Seas Similar to Antarctica, the High Seas faced threats in the 1960s when nation-states began unilaterally and arbitrarily, extending resource recovery activities further into the depths of international waters.146 In the interest of equity, particularly the interests of landlocked nations, UNCLOS delimited sovereign access to the seas, allowing usage only within the established exclusive economic zones (EEZs).147 An annex to UNCLOS provided a procedural framework in which resource recovery enterprises could operate in international common areas beyond the EEZs, precluding the unilateral capture of global resources by one nation.148 Once more, a mutually coercive framework removed certain freedoms in the interest of mankind without unjustly limiting equitable access to resources. c. The Atmosphere Divergent from the problems of the ice and sea, atmospheric regulation resolved an issue more analogous to geospace debris proliferation. Atmospheric utility is quite simple: breathable air and protection from deadly cosmic radiation. When satellite imagery revealed the sizable hole in the ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention placed an outright ban on ozone-depleting chemicals in everyday consumables.149 This prohibition directly addressed the source of the negative externality, forcing humanity to internalize the externality through alternate investment in refrigerants. Recent evidence of the reduction of ozone loss validates the mutually coercive delimitation within the Montreal Protocol.150 d. Regulating the Telecommunication Spectrum The business model and financial strategy of telecommunications entities influence satellite deployment planning. Typically, orbital placement aims to “maximize a potential user base,” and if that base happens to encompass, for instance, the continental United States, market competition drastically narrows the availability of slots for satellite positioning.151 Realizing that satellite acquisition becomes moot without conscientious “use of telemetry and control . . . required for spaceflight,”152 the Space Radiocommunication Conference convened to revise the Radio Regulations in 1963,153 granting the ITU authority to allocate radio frequencies among spacefaring entities.154 Originally, the ITU: Allocated orbits and frequencies solely through a first-in-time system. This led to concern that developed countries would secure all of the available slots before developing countries had the technological capacity to use them. Although some orbits and frequencies are still allocated on a first-in-time basis, each state is now guaranteed a certain number of future orbits and frequencies, regardless of its current technological capacity.155 The FCC regulates the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum allocated to the United States.156 Arguably, the ITU and agencies like the FCC engage in de facto appropriation of the more highly sought-after orbits.157 Yet to an extent, the ITU’s delimiting of the radio-frequency spectrum remedied the negative externalities of non-appropriation in geospace, such as the overcrowding of active satellites and the resultant interference. Where the ITU’s scheme does not remedy the byproduct of geospace resource use, it succeeds in ensuring communication capabilities remain free from inequitable use.158 e. The OST’s Ineffective Delimitations The recurrent theme among the aforementioned regulatory schemes is the preservation of utility within the commons concerned.159 The frameworks each provide a means to enjoy shared resources while removing the potential for destruction. The OST’s nonproliferation provisions properly regulate the usage of the space commons to further the enjoyment of space’s true utility: scientific discovery and telecommunications. Likewise, the Liability Convention reinforces the necessity to maintain heightened situational awareness to guarantee the mutual, uninterrupted enjoyment of activity in space.160 But nation-states exploit the loop-holes within these documents to avoid internalizing some of their externalities. Specifically, the Liability Convention only assigns liability for damage caused to space objects when fault can actually be determined.161 Though it would be simple to assign fault to a collision caused by an intact and inoperative satellite, it is virtually impossible to identify the owner of smaller pieces of debris. Further, while the ITU reserves slots for nations not represented in space,162 it does nothing to stop those capable of reaching geospace from littering the commons and destroying the utility of reserved slots.163 Holistically, none of the delimitations in the Corpus Juris Spatialis negate the cause of the growing belt of debris in geospace. As a sui generis resource, the mere occupation of LEO or GSO equates to the reduction of the overall utility of geospace. When an entity launches a rocket into space, the accompanying payload causes either (1) temporary reduction of the aggregate utility of geospace or (2) permanent reduction of the aggregate utility of geospace.164 The first delimitation prong will recommend bifurcating the applicability of the Corpus Juris Spatialis, with separate regimes for outer space and geospace. While the commercialization of outer space is not overly injurious to the international commons or interests of developing nations, the overcrowding of affluent spacefaring entities vying for orbital acquisition puts immense pressure on the finite resources within geospace. Therefore, demarcating the upper limit of geospace will allow entities to continue exploring the universe without imposing the restrictions placed on those seeking geospace positioning.165 This modification will allow continued use of both regions, but coerce more sustainable usage of geospace with the assistance of the secondary prong below. 2. Global Liability Operating under the theory that humanity holds an implied property right in the global commons but limited under the non-appropriation clause to protect those interests through traditional property mechanisms, the logical alternative is to impose liability on actions violative of the global interest.166 Further, assuming humanity collectively benefits from utilization of this commons, then humanity likewise must internalize the cost of the negative externalities imposed.167 This means that spacefarers, as members of the global collective, hold both the right and obligation to protect that right for others.168 Therefore, anyone utilizing or benefitting from the utilization of the geospace commons has an equitable duty to ensure its sustainability. Under traditional tort theories, when one has a duty, breach of that duty causally linked to a measurable injury is actionable. In terms of the duty to humanity when utilizing geospace, the culmination of Kessler Syndrome represents the measurable injury. Kessler informed the scientific community in 1970 of the probable cataclysmic chain-reaction and destructive conclusion of unabated geospace debris pollution.169 This theory, reiterated consistently since its dissemination, materialized in 2009.170 Fundamentally, every spacefaring entity and approving launching state knows of this monumental threat to the utility of geospace. Yet to date, mitigation guidelines remain non-binding, and four-figure satellite constellations continue to receive approval.171 To incorporate a time-honored risk calculation method, the Hand Formula is instructive and evidences a trend toward unapologetic endangerment to the utility of geospace in isolation of the associated tort regime. Let us assume the burden to mitigate space debris is $18.5 million172 but the probable magnitude of not mitigating the accumulation of space debris equates to reverting our technological capabilities back to the 1800s. Considering the accumulation of debris from the accidental or intentional breakup of geospace satellites, the probability of Kessler Syndrome fully concluding in the absence of a comprehensive mitigation protocol is one hundred percent.173 While difficult to quantify, the value of our scientific progress attributable to the advent of space travel far outstrips the burden to mitigate space debris. Should Kessler Syndrome become our reality, the measurable injury is the cost of reestablishing global communications without the usage of satellite relays. To add insult to injury, the invaluable utility of geospace will cease to exist. A viable alternative would institute a regime of shared global liability which makes consideration of capital investors as well as nonparticipating beneficiaries in the interest of equity. That is, should the inevitable prison for humanity become a reality, the entire global community will be liable to pay an equitable share of the overall cost of recovery efforts.174 The Liability Convention should undergo a similar trifurcation, adding this new scheme to the current strict and absolute liability mechanisms.175 As such, shared global liability will consider the responsibility of nation-states and private entities in isolation.176 This will coerce cooperation among all agencies, nations, and private entities because the equitable share of responsibility will drive collective resolution. V. CONCLUSION In light of the emerging global sentiments regarding environmental conservation and sustainability, instituting a regime that clearly defines a legal consequence in the event of environmental ruin boasts greater coercive force than non-binding resolutions. 9 This international agreement aligns with the universal value that the international community places on the utility of geospace.177 In essence, it protects geospace by forcing the signatory to face the reality of their negative externalities. It is unlikely that a nation-state exists that does not value space exploration and the benefits attributable. In April of 2019, in the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), COPUOS adopted an agenda that focused on the long-term sustainability of the space commons, space traffic management, equitable uses of GSO, and the mitigation of space debris.178 Mindful of space’s critical role in attaining many of the SDGs, the Committee put forth guidelines to facilitate capacity building without prejudice to any one nation-states’ economic capabilities. To be sure, the Guidelines for the Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities are an important step forward, but many delegates reiterated the importance of developing binding instruments, particularly in light of developments in “space resource exploitation, large constellations, and space debris remediation.”179 Looking forward, research continues to advance the availability of debris mitigation mechanisms, such as the European Space Agency’s newly-commissioned ClearSpace-1 satellite.180 Mission objectives increasingly include end-of-life procedures to place satellites in appropriate orbits to decrease clutter in areas where active satellites operate.181 In the context of private entities, Planetary Resources—originally positioned to become a principle player in the space mining industry—merged with Consensys Space and quickly launched TruSat, a crowd-sourced situational awareness forum that compiles the reports of private citizens to track objects in geospace.182 These developments instill confidence in the international community’s sentiments toward ameliorating this ever-approaching catastrophe. It is with great hope that this trend continues, and COPUOS promulgates binding regulations to ensure the sustainability of geospace for the common heritage of mankind. “But we can never do nothing. That which we have done for thousands of years is also action. It also produces evils.”183 Since the national appropriation is banned by the OST, banning private appropriation would ipso facto result in space being a global commons, so the plan is not extra T and is normal means.
Over the past years, the proliferation of space activities and the diversification of space actors have offered plenty of opportunities but also posed challenges to outer space’s long-term sustainability. The rapidly transforming space sector and growing global space economy have enabled many satellite applications and services, while outer space and orbital slots have become more congested with an increasing space debris population. The commercialization of space activities has denounced a growing interest in private, non-governmental uses of outer space, including space resources. As such, outer space continues to prove itself as a strategic domain from scientific, economic, and security standpoints. As far as international law is concerned, novel debates have emerged about the ontological nature of outer space. Incredibly vast, magnificent, and complex by nature, it constitutes a unique domain, unlike anywhere else on Earth. Throughout the years, outer space has been subject to a specific international framework based on legal principles established at the dawn of the Space Age, notably open access to and non-appropriation of outer space. Space law treaties and international instruments govern space activities and provide relevant input concerning the legal status of outer space. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), in its first article, solemnly declares that the exploration and use of outer space “shall be the province of mankind”. Therefore, a common interest and shared fate await humankind as we advance through the cosmos. Collective action, based on international cooperation and mutual assistance, is of the essence. Nevertheless, a universal definition and delimitation of outer space, as a distinct domain on Planet Earth, remains to be multilaterally accorded (Bittencourt, 2015). Given the evolving nature of space activities and economy, the legal status of outer space has led to intensive debates in various fora. By constituting a resource domain to which all nations have access, but to which none has the right to claim sovereignty, outer space may be understood as an example of global commons – similarly to the high seas, deep seabed, and Antarctica (Buck, 1998, p. 6). Therefore, outer space and its natural resources, including those located at the Moon and other celestial bodies, are not subject to national appropriation by any means. The legal status of outer space as a global commons is of extraordinary importance and relevance for space law and space policy. Indeed, it influences the application and interpretation of the legal framework developed for the governance of outer space activities, vis-à-vis the domain and its resource units. To accurately assess this scenario, a comparative approach is followed. The specific features of global commons and legal ramifications justify further appraisal to comprehend definitions and correlated concepts well. 2. Key problems and conflicts In space law as in space policy, words matter. By legally classifying outer space as a global commons, relevant political consequences, both national and international, naturally ensue. In order to properly understand the nuances and avoid misconceptions, one should revisit principles of international law. Centuries of customs, often based on Roman law concepts, have led to important regulations and definitions. The proper evaluation of those concepts may illuminate the path forwards. Global Commons Concept Legally defining “global commons” has proved to be a challenge, leading to incompatible views. Global commons are socially constructed, as explained by John Vogler, being determined by “shifts in human knowledge, capability and perceptions of scarcity” (Vogler, 2012, p. 61). As a legal concept, its roots may be traced back to Roman law. More specifically, reference should be made to the notions of res nullius and res communis, applicable to domains not subjected to rights of a specific subject. Res nullius is understood as encompassing things belonging to no one or areas free to be acquired by occupatio.1 Terrae nullius, a derivative international law concept, is applicable to unclaimed areas that may be occupied by states (Rose, 2003; Shaw, 2017, p. 372). Not subjected to exclusive sovereignty, global commons may either be unowned resource domains, or deemed as belonging to the international community in totum. Soroos explains that unowned domains can be regarded as commons if generally understood that they cannot be claimed by any individual actor, neither partially nor as a whole. A regulatory scheme may eventually be accorded by users, to reflect shared interests. On the other hand, domains considered as belonging to the international community presume that all states are their partial owners, therefore legitimized to take part in the decision-making processes related to its uses (Soroos, 2001, p. 45).
Treating space as a commons solves orbital debris. Current non-binding agreements are not enough. Silverstein and Panda ‘3/9 - Benjamin Silverstein research analyst for the Space Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MA, International Relations, Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs BA, International Affairs, George Washington University and Ankit Panda Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. AB, Princeton University, “Space Is a Great Commons. It’s Time to Treat It as Such.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Web). March 9, 2021. Accessed Dec. 13, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/09/space-is-great-commons.-it-s-time-to-treat-it-as-such-pub-84018 AT The failure to manage Earth orbits as a commons undermines safety and predictability, exposing space operators to growing risks such as collisions with other satellites and debris. The long-standing debris problem has been building for decades and demands an international solution.¶ Competing states need to coalesce behind a commons-based understanding of Earth orbits to set the table for a governance system to organize space traffic and address rampant debris. New leadership in the United States can spur progress on space governance by affirming that Earth orbits are a great commons. So far, President Joe Biden and his administration have focused on major space projects, but a relatively simple policy declaration that frames Earth orbits as a great commons can support efforts to negotiate space governance models for issues like debris mitigation and remediation. The Biden administration can set the stage to pursue broad space policy goals by establishing a consensus among states, particularly those with the most invested in Earth orbits, that space is a great commons.¶ THE PRESSING NEED FOR SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ The Earth orbits that provide the majority of benefits to states and commercial ventures represent only a tiny fraction of outer space as a whole. Competition for the limited volume of these Earth orbits is especially fierce since two satellites cannot be in the same place at the same time and not all orbits are equally useful for all missions. The number of objects residing in Earth orbits is now at an all-time high, with most new objects introduced into orbits at altitudes of between 400 and 700 kilometers above sea level. Millions of pieces of debris in Earth orbits pose a threat to continuing space operations. For instance, the final U.S. space shuttle missions faced 1-in-300 odds of losing a space vehicle or crew member to orbital debris or micrometeoroid impacts.¶ Collisions with fragments of orbital litter as small as a few millimeters across can ruin satellites and end missions. Current technologies cannot track all of these tiny pieces of debris, leaving space assets at the mercy of undetectable, untraceable, and unpredictable pieces of space junk. Some researchers have determined that the debris population in low Earth orbit is already self-sustaining, meaning that collisions between space objects will produce debris more rapidly than natural forces, like atmospheric drag, can remove it from orbit.¶ States—namely the United States, Russia, China, and India—have exacerbated this debris accumulation trend by testing kinetic anti-satellite capabilities or otherwise purposefully fragmenting their satellites in orbit. These states, along with the rest of the multilateral disarmament community, are currently at an impasse on establishing future space governance mechanisms that can address the debris issue. A portion of this impasse may be attributable to disparate views of the nature of outer space in the international context. Establishing a clear view among negotiating parties that Earth orbits should be treated as a great commons would establish a basis for future agreements that reduce debris-related risks.¶ Beyond debris-generating, kinetic anti-satellite weapons tests, revolutionary operating concepts challenge existing space traffic management practices. For instance, commercial ventures are planning networks of thousands of satellites to provide low-latency connectivity on Earth and deploying them by the dozens. States are following this trend. Some are considering transitioning away from using single (or few) exquisite assets in higher orbits and toward using many satellites in low Earth orbits. These new operational concepts could lead to an increase in collision risks.¶ Without new governance agreements, problems related to debris, heavy orbital traffic, and harmful interference will only intensify. Debris in higher orbits can persist for a century or more. The costs of adapting to increasingly polluted orbits would be immense, and the opportunity costs would be even higher. For instance, all else being equal, hardening satellites against collisions increases their mass and volume, in turn raising launch costs per satellite. These costs, rooted in a failure to govern space as a commons, will be borne by all space actors, including emerging states and commercial entities.¶ EXISTING FORMS OF SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ A well-designed governance system, founded on a widespread understanding of Earth orbits as a great commons, could temper these risks. Currently, space is not wholly unregulated, but existing regulations are limited both in scope and implementation. Many operators pledge to follow national regulations and international guidelines, but decentralized accountability mechanisms limit enforcement. These guidelines also do not cover the full range of potentially risky behaviors in space. For example, while some space operators can maneuver satellites to avoid collisions, there are no compulsory rules or standards on who has the right of way.¶ At the interstate level, seminal multilateral agreements provide some more narrow guidance on what is and is not acceptable in space. Most famously, the Outer Space Treaty affirms that outer space “shall be free for exploration and use by all states without discrimination of any kind” and that “there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.” Similar concepts of Earth orbits being a great commons arise in subsequent international texts. Agreements like the Liability Convention impose fault-based liability for debris-related collisions in space, but it is difficult to prove fault in this regime in part because satellite owners and operators have yet to codify a standard of care in space, and thus the regime does not clearly disincentivize debris creation in orbit. Other rules of behavior in Earth orbits have been more successful in reducing harmful interference between satellite operations, but even these efforts are limited in scope.¶ States have acceded to supranational regulations of the most limited (and thus most valuable) Earth orbits. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) coordinates, but does not authorize, satellite deployments and operations in geosynchronous orbits and manages radiofrequency spectrum assignments in other regions of space to reduce interference between satellites. These coordination activities are underpinned by the ITU’s constitution, which reminds states “that radio frequencies and any associate orbits . . . are limited natural resources,” indicating a commons-based approach to governing the radiofrequency spectrum. However, the union’s processes are still adapting to new operational realities in low Earth orbit, and these rules were never designed to address issues like debris. Current law governing space bans state appropriation, BUT ALLOWS private appropriation. A true global commons regime would require a form of democratic governance that ensures the equitable use of space resources and overcomes the expansion of neoliberal capitalism into outer space.
Using ‘commons’ as a noun, thus, implies a methodological break with this reification of common things, as well as with the logic underlying the classification of goods in economic theory. A ‘commons’ is first and foremost an institutional affair and, more specifically, an institutional space defined by collectively developed practical rules. What is most important is the dimension of instituting the activity, and not the technical characteristics of things and goods. Here lies the essential difference between common goods and the common(s). We must specify, therefore, that any commons, insofar as it is instituted as such, is a good in an ethical and political sense. By contrast, any good that is capable of being purchased and sold, is not in itself a commons. This means that a commons is a good only under the condition that it is not a possession or an acquisition. In other words, once it is instituted, a commons is inalienable and inappropriable. It creates a space within which use prevails over ownership. It is, thus, not a resource in itself – even when it is related to one. In this way we understand a commons to be the active link between an object, a place, a natural resource (for example, a waterfall or a forest), or something artificial (for example, a theatre or a square) and the collective activity of those who take charge of it, preserve it, maintain it and take care of it. This activity is not external to the commons, but instead inherent in it. If we take this to be the definition of every common, then a third implication is that a common, regardless of its specific designation, requires self-government or democratic government. The very act of establishing a common is in and of itself a democratic act. The act of governing a common is nothing more than the continuation of the democratic act; it is thus a sort of continuation of the institution. It consists of reviving this institution by critically assessing its collective rules, whenever the situation demands it. As such, the governance of the common can only proceed from the principle of democracy – the non-democratic governance of a common would threaten, in the short-term, the very existence of this common. I call this the principle of the common, this time in the singular form. For that purpose, I refer to the Latin etymology of this word: the common, or ‘cum-munus’, is the co-obligation that results from co-participation in the same activity. This co-obligation cannot proceed from the simple fact of belonging. Democracy is, in essence, co-participation in public affairs. The Occupy movement (for example, the anti-austerity movement in Spain, also referred to as the 15-M Movement or the Indignados, or the wave of protests in 2013 to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul’s Gezi Park) brought with it a strong anti-oligarchic critique of contemporary political representation, advocating for ‘real democracy’. Most notable is that this democratic requirement is strongly tied to ecological claims based on preserving the ‘commons’ (urban spaces in particular) against any sort of private or state enclosure. It then becomes evident that the commons (in the plural) cannot but be established or governed but by the implementation of the principle of the common (in the singular), which is to say, democracy. To sum up, common use requires self-government. Yet these examples would seem to speak in favour of the establishment of a local democracy, confined within specific geographic limits (for example, a neighbourhood or a city). Aristotle argued for a similar sort of constraint, pointing that beyond a certain number, citizens could no longer know each other. This capacity to mutually engage with one another was, according to him, an important condition for the exercise of democracy. Thus emerges a challenge I will here try to tackle: what sort of democracy is required for commons which are not local, but global in nature – global commons? My thesis is that this democracy can only be global. It remains to be seen what this sort of global democracy should look like. CURRENT PARADIGMS TO DEAL WITH THE UNLIMITED COSMOCAPITALISM With neoliberal capitalism we have come to know a singular historical phenomenon, which I will refer to as ‘cosmocapitalism’. How can this be understood? Cosmocapitalism is not merely a geographical or spatial extension of capitalism, since this extension appeared along with the birth of capitalism. It represents capitalism’s tendency to become universal. By this, I mean that capital tends to submit all aspects of human existence, even those most intimate and subjective, along with the natural world, to the market’s logic, which is nothing more than the logic of competition. The terms ‘world’ and ‘cosmos’ do not describe the planet in a physical sense, or even the global population, but rather the political framework, with its institutional and normative qualities whereby the expansion of the market’s logic becomes possible. Max Weber already described the idea of an immense cosmos which imposes its economic activity on the individual caught within the market’s grasp (Weber, 2002). Today, this cosmos has grown beyond the single economic sphere to include the social sphere. 3.1 Humanity’s Common Heritage Paradigm and the Appropriation of Space A first example will allow us to highlight this logic of limitlessness by examining the delegation of tasks between the state and private enterprises. On 25 November 2015, just a few days before the opening of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris, Barack Obama passed law H.R.2262, which provided authorization for private American companies to use natural resources from outer space (US Congress, 2015). As we know, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty established the legal status of outer space in the following manner (United Nations, 1967). Article 1 acknowledged that the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, implying free and equal access without discrimination of any kind. Article 2 established that ‘Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means’. These two conditions, equal access for all and non-ownership, are strictly complementary and both refer to subjects recognized by international law, that is to say, the states: ‘national appropriation’ is state ownership and non-appropriation refers to non-appropriation by states only. It is precisely from this ambiguity that the law (US Congress, 2015) was cleverly enacted on 25 November 2015. Its name is already quite self-evident: US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. In a nutshell, the Act gives any United States (US) citizen involved in commercial exploration and exploitation of an asteroid or space resource, the right to own, possess, transport, use, and sell this resource provided it is in accordance with the applicable legislation. This amounts to giving American companies a property right over space resources in due form (Calimaq, 2015). Yet, the law passed by Congress seems to pretend the contrary, as it provides a so-called ‘Disclaimer of Extraterritorial Sovereignty’ in Section 3 of the Act (US Congress, 2015) By the enactment of this Act, the United States– Exercises its jurisdiction over United States citizens and vessels, and foreign persons and vessels otherwise subject to its jurisdiction, in the exercise of the high seas freedom to engage in exploration for, and commercial recovery of, hard mineral resources of the deep seabed in accordance with generally accepted principles of international law recognized by the United States; but Does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any areas or resources in the deep seabed. We can clearly see how this law circumvents the prohibition of national appropriation articulated by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty: the prohibition forbids states themselves from ‘national appropriation by claim of sovereignty’, but it does not prevent a private company from exploring or exploiting space resources for commercial purposes. It goes without saying that the enactment of this law was very much applauded by private companies planning to embark on asteroid mining. What is remarkable about this law is that it confirms the international commitment of the US not to assert sovereignty over any space resource, while simultaneously conferring private companies the right to appropriate resources therein without any restriction. Under the Outer Space Treaty, the legal status of the ‘common things’ (res communes), under which certain resources are known to be common by nature (as in Roman law), is not formally addressed. Under Article I of the Outer Space Treaty, the outer space is not even declared to be the ‘common heritage of mankind’, but simply the ‘province of all mankind’ (United Nations, 1967). The notion of ‘common heritage’ was only explicitly introduced in 1967 to deal with the legal status of the deep seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (United Nations General Assembly, 1967). Regardless of the ambiguity of this notion, particularly regarding the holder of such heritage, the idea of ‘heritage’ implies a double duty to both preserve and transmit it. However, international law limits the right of use for states only, as they alone are faced with the prohibition of appropriation. We are, therefore, presented with a way of extrapolating the res communes category inherited from Roman law, insofar as non-appropriation and common use are present, but subordinate to the goodwill of the states. Thus, we are faced with a cheap if not unfinished version of a ‘common’, which is entrusted to states, and limits state sovereignty without even calling it into question. With the Competitiveness Act (US Congress, 2015), we are faced with an act of state sovereignty that manages to circumvent the prohibition of appropriation by a sovereign state without formally violating it. This represents a sort of ‘delegation’ under which the state, on the one hand, grants its citizens a legal title that it denies to itself, on the other, it does so in order to better guarantee it to those to whom it has been delegated. The imperium (state sovereignty) gives full licence for all candidates to the dominium, to privately control and appropriate any resources they are able to seize: statutory law enforces beforehand the power that technology provides. Beyond this collusion between the state and private companies, what emerges here is the powerful homology between state and private ownership: imperium and dominium appear to be based on two forms of a similar logic of ownership, which affirm one another. The primary challenge facing the heritage of mankind paradigm is that it does not fundamentally break with interstate logic and, as such, leaves leeway for private appropriation. 3.2 The Global Public Goods Paradigm and the Value of Biodiversity A second example allows us to unveil the same neoliberal capitalist logic at work within the realm of the destruction of the biosphere. At the end of the 1980s, with the momentum of the pollution rights initiated by Reagan, George H. W. Bush encouraged the expansion of the market endorsing the ‘No Net Loss’ goal (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: p. 45). The seemingly small adjective ‘net’ carries with it a heavy connotation. It does not mean that we do not have the right to destroy biodiversity but rather, the opposite. Indeed, under the ‘No Net Loss’ principle, we have the right to destroy biodiversity as long as we replace whatever has been destroyed elsewhere. In other words, damages resulting from human activities must be balanced by at least equivalent gains. For example, we have the right to destroy ten acres of forest in one area, as long as we plant ten acres of trees elsewhere, within the next 30 years, because once the new trees have grown, it will not make any difference. In market lingo, this is referred to as ‘biodiversity offsetting’. The neoliberal argument is the same and is now well-established – we have failed to obtain our reduction goals, so we must adapt our strategy by trying new financial mechanisms, which are much more effective than the inefficient laws and regulations. That these so-called ‘laws and regulations’ have failed because they have bet on the market must be hidden. It is always the same explanation – if we failed, it is not because we conceded to the market, but rather the opposite, because we did not sufficiently take advantage of it. What is the relationship between this logic of compensation and actual biodiversity, which is made up of the interaction between complex systems, and not of detachable and interchangeable parts? A good example comes from the Brazilian company Vale, which sought to present eucalyptus plantations as a form of reforestation of the Amazon rainforest whose destruction it has actively contributed to. The logic of this compensation can be understood as equivalency logic in its most literal sense. That is, it assumes that there is a commensurability between the Amazon rainforest and eucalyptus plantations, which would affirm their equal value. This type of reasoning is completely indifferent to the sort of relationship a tree has with the soil: the fact that the eucalyptus, which originated from Australia, actually dries up the Amazonian soil, is not at all taken into consideration (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: pp. 94–5). As Marx so aptly described it in the first Volume of his major book Capital (1992), the logic behind market equivalency is at its core a logic of indifference to the qualitative differences that exist between different types of work, and the products that stem from each. What is remarkable here is that we are not referring to the products of human work but instead to living ecosystems. Here we have come to a critical point: the marketing of biodiversity requires that we assign value to something that is not, in fact, a product of work. This argument was reaffirmed by Pavel Sukhdev, a banker who has directed the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since 2007: ‘We take advantage of nature because it has value. But we lose it because it is free’ (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: p. 62). Thus, ‘the economy has become the currency of politics’ (sic), we have to learn to understand ‘the economic value of nature’ and express it in a way that is clear to political decision makers. In essence, we must remedy the ‘invisible economics of nature’ by assigning to it a monetary value or a price. In order to carry out this task we must employ a calculation: in this way, the pollination of trees and flowers by bees constitutes an economically invisible service whose value is estimated at 200 billion dollars, which is almost 8 per cent of the global agricultural production on earth according to Pavel Sukhdev (ibid.: p. 9). The same principle can be applied to pure air or drinking water – the services they render become more and more valuable as they become increasingly rare. Scarcity has always determined value, except that now scarcity represents the services provided by nature. But what exactly does the notion of an economically assessable ‘service’ mean? What vision of nature does it propose and is this conceptualization really new? For a long time, biodiversity was conceived of as a group of resources comprised of several distinct elements (genes, species, habitats and so on), which were capable of being owned, purchased and sold. This conception prevailed in Rio during the Convention on Biological Diversity (United Nations, 1992). But, at the end of the twentieth century, a more dynamic representation emerged which posited that ecosystems should be recognized as the ‘third level of biodiversity’, situated above genes and species (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: pp. 164–166). Now processes and flows take precedence over individual entities and elements. Although we can measure the intrinsic value of the latter, we can only appreciate the value of process and flow in terms of ‘services’. It is, thus, not biodiversity in and of itself which is valuable, but more so the services rendered by the ecosystems that possess value. Hence the notion of ‘ecosystem services’, consisting of streams of natural capital stock which, when combined with human industrial activities, gives way to human welfare (ibid.: pp. 59 and 165). ‘Provisioning services’ (related to ‘resources’: food, wood, grains and so on), ‘regulating services’ (the climate, rainfall, water quality), and ‘cultural services’ (spiritual or recreational value of nature) can be counted among such services. Biobanks sell shares to protect species threatened by deforestation to the very companies who carry out such acts (ibid.: p. 154). Many are unwavering in their belief that the biosphere as a whole should be treated as natural capital. In keeping with this line of thought, the following shift occurs: the biosphere should not enter the commercial sphere merely as a commodity (the logic underlying the sale of timber and industrial capitalism, marketing ‘biological resources’ and patented genes, and so on), but also and most importantly as an asset (that is, within the context of securities eligible for future revenue based on the logic of annuities) (ibid.: p. 166). Thus, we move from the simple commodification of nature, typical of industrial capitalism, which emphasizes producing goods, to neoliberal capitalist financialization and, simultaneously, from the portrayal of nature as a ‘resource’ to its representation as capital generating a ‘flow of services’. How does the theory of GPGs (Kaul et al., 1999) allow us to fight against this trend to financialization? Is GPGs theory not designed, on the contrary, to promote governance of private and state actors? As we know, beyond the criteria relative to the beneficiaries of such goods (the publicum which turns these goods into global goods), this theory distinguishes between three classes of GPGs: global natural goods (for example, ozone layer, climate stability); (ii) goods that constitute man-made heritage (for example, knowledge, cultural heritage, the Internet); and (iii) goods that result from global politics (for example, peace, health, financial stability). While the first class represents natural goods, the other two result from human activity. However, the distinction between these three distinct classes becomes blurred in the case of the negative consequences flowing from poorly managed non-renewable energy. As a result of global policies, global natural goods slide into the third category of GPGs. Moreover, an economistic approach in terms of supply requires that these natural goods are reduced to ‘stock variables’ like the goods of the second category, whereas the goods of the third category are conceived as ‘flow variables’ since a continued effort is required to ensure their potential. But if natural assets are now part of the third category, should we conclude that they have become ‘flow variables’? In any case, the evolution from ‘stock’ to ‘flow’ corresponds precisely with the sort of change that accompanies and legitimizes nature’s financialization. Finally, and most worryingly, the value attributed to biological diversity is estimated by reference to the costs of protecting it. Thus, biological diversity enters the category of public goods that have an ‘intrinsic existence value’ ‘in an effort to grapple with and ultimately define the intrinsic worth of protecting the good’ (ibid.: p. 253). We would be better off articulating that this is not intrinsic at all: biodiversity has no value of its own and is not a good in and of itself; instead, its value is derived from the fact that it is the result of subjective appreciation, which amounts to recognizing that this is a good. We see what can result from the ambiguity surrounding the term ‘good’. But overall this confirms the rejection of the notion of biodiversity’s intrinsic value in favour of the idea that value is assigned by an external party, which expresses in its own way the notion of ‘ecosystem services’. 4. COSMODEMOCRACY Given the logic underlying cosmocapitalism, we must find out a new type of global democracy if we wish to have any chance of halting and reversing it. Such a democracy will be referred to below as cosmodemocracy. It is indeed linked to cosmopolitanism; that is, to the idea of global politics and global citizenship. 4.1 Different Types of Cosmopolitanism 4.1.1 Cosmopolitanism as a project Cosmopolitanism can be defined as the feeling and consciousness of belonging to the same world. It can be expressed in many different ways. It can represent the awareness of living in the same world or sharing the same human condition, the feeling of sharing a common, confined space, and the feeling of being affected by everything that affects another part of humanity. According to Kant’s well-known dictum, ‘a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world’ (Kant, 1977). The awareness of belonging to a shared world has been expressed in noteworthy works of philosophy. This is particularly true of stoicism, within which man is seen as belonging to part of a ‘Universal’ or ‘Upper City’ and whose political city is just a small image. Individuals are then viewed as a citizens of the world, but this citizenship is not at all political. By virtue of its universalism, Christianity was able to modify and extend its tradition through the ‘catholicity’ of the Church. The idea that human rights are not limited to any specific country, but are universal in nature, arose from Christian universalism and found support from various scholars and lawyers, including Anacharsis Cloots, author of Bases constitutionnelles de la République du genre humain (1793). Yet the framework remains one in which the world is assimilated to the nation: the human race becomes the only ruler so that the Universal Republic must identify with the Republic of Mankind and there is only one nation that corresponds with humanity itself. With Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay (1795), cosmopolitanism begins to take a new meaning. Kant distinguishes between three overlapping components of public law: municipal or civil law (ius civitatis), which should be a republican constitution; (ii) international law or the law of nations (ius gentium), which provides for the right of states to engage in mutual relations or international law via a federation of free states; and (iii) cosmopolitan law (ius cosmopoliticum). However, cosmopolitan law is intended to guarantee the right of ‘hospitality’ to all individuals – which is a right of access merely to promote trade. In this way, cosmopolitanism restricts the cosmos to the commercial sphere without establishing a genuine political citizenship. 4.1.2 Factual cosmopolitanization What was once only an idea or ideal has become part of how we now live. Cosmopolitanism has become the new reality, both in an objective and subjective sense, and what Ulrich Beck has called ‘banal cosmopolitanism’ (2006: p. 26). This factual cosmopolitanization, borne out of the growth of interdependence and transnationalization of ways of life and cultures, should not be confused with transnational political activities and institutional creations, even if the link between these phenomena seems quite obvious. Factual cosmopolitanization is essential to the world’s inhabitants, albeit to varying degrees. It became extremely important at the turn of the century. With the rise of global risks, it began to haunt our minds, penetrating the banality of everyday life, for example, with respect to food, altering our aesthetic tastes, and changing our approach to interstate relations by giving preference to human rights over sovereignty. It is no longer a matter of assigning positive value to the world’s political organization by imagining what the future might hold. It is rather about establishing and characterizing the multitude of processes that transform everyday life up to the point where they lead to the relativization of national borders. According to Beck, ‘reality itself has become cosmopolitan’ (ibid.: p. 10). With globalization and resistance to the latter, a new era has emerged – that of ‘reflexive modernity’. In order to see, understand, and analyse it, one must abandon the ‘national perspective’ and ‘methodological nationalism’, 4.1.3 Normative and institutional cosmopolitanism What Beck also failed to see is that normative and institutional cosmopolitanism do not flow freely and naturally from factual cosmopolitanization. This is so, firstly, because of the opposition of forces that have no interest in seeing their powers being eroded. Second, and most importantly, because a strictly empirical conceptualization of factual cosmopolitanization runs the risk of overlooking immediately what is generated from internal relations of domination in national and local settings, and what is beyond local level democratic control. Now, because the local and national spheres are losing their ‘naturalness’, for those who live in those areas, the effects of globalization imply that the normative and institutional issues arise with urgency in a political form that is antagonistic. Factual cosmopolitanization is no longer a ‘happy globalization’, but for many the dispossession of their destiny. We must give credit to Karl Renner, Austrian Social Democrat and Austro-Marxist, for encouraging the reflection on the switch between a de facto internationalism to an institutionalized internationalism (Renner, 1998). This de facto internationalism, comprised of economic, social and cultural forms of internationalization, demonstrates how the world’s legal fabric extends beyond the mere sum of nations. In the same way that the nation is the product of a historical development which culminates in its legal capacity at the end of the eighteenth century, the ‘internation’, to use Mauss’ term, will inevitably find its legal form from a substrate of facts that is poorly or not at all seen, but as such, represents a legal duty. The term ‘international’ should not be taken at face value, as it represents much more than international relations between states. Indeed, it involves the way in which the world is constructed, legally and politically, in its post-Westphalian organization. According to Mauss, the enemy is state sovereignty, as it represents an obstacle to real human interests. We are moving towards a world order that will no longer be limited by the coexistence of sovereign nation states, what Renner calls the ‘institutional Oecumene’. The creation of the League of Nations in 1920 gave way to a new era, as the ‘community of nations’ was granted legal standing above the states. Renner claims that, as a result of the establishment of the League, a ‘supra-State international law’ appeared in order to guarantee an infra-state national law, which itself protects minorities. However, as Renner argues, this step remained constrained by the desire to freeze the acquired positions after the First World War. We know that this is also exactly what happened in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations: as demonstrated recently during the COP 21, the most glaring contradiction still exists between the interstate logic of a group of sovereign states, and the need for a global community which undermines the sovereignty of each state in order to respect higher principles which cater to the interests of humanity. Hence Renner’s proposal in 1937: delegates representing ‘partial international interests’ (capital, labour, culture and so on) should be members of the League of Nations Council. It is under this condition that international interests would be taken into account, since the representatives in question would not be able to mandate all issues nationally. The question, then, is how to make this global human community exist as such. We can envision this as Renner did when describing a global parliament or, more specifically, a second chamber of representatives in which the people themselves articulate and make decisions about their economic structure and social values, along with their present grievances and hopes for the future (Renner, 1998: p. 74). Yet it is evident that the creation of a supranational chamber does not respond to the needs of those who represent ‘partial international interests’. Indeed, the parliamentary system of representation, with all its inherent vices, is simply replicated on a global scale. In order to overcome the interstate’s limitations, we must decide to make the leap from internationalism and cosmopolitanism to cosmopolitics; that is, to a political organization of humanity 4.2 Cosmopolitics The two paradigms discussed above suffer from a crippling limitation – that of humanity’s common heritage which subjects the ‘common things’ to the interstate logic, and that of GPGs, which leave the latter to the governance of private and state actors. Still, progress has been made in the establishment of humankind law. But, even assuming a legal status was assigned to humanity, this would not suffice, and neither would a cosmopolitan consciousness, in reaching cosmopolitan institutions. How do we overcome the double impasse imposed by the interstate and global private law, while paving the way for humanity’s common form of political activity; which is to say, a real democracy for humanity? I would like to highlight two points which I feel are complementary. The first relates to the institutional architecture of a global democracy and the second concerns the political activity of world citizens. The first requires, above all, a political imagination, and the second assumes that we extend the observation of collective practices and experimentations already underway. 4.2.1 The dual federation of the commons In order to introduce the first point, we must return to our discussion of the commons. Early on in this chapter, we established that the commons are institutional matters to the extent that they determine the rules of common use. In this sense, the commons emerge from what we might legally refer to as the ‘public’, not only in the orthodox economics sense of the collective nature of ‘public goods’, but also in terms of the public in opposition to the private. It is important to note that this public sui generis is non-state public. What exactly does this mean? The state’s public aims to ensure universal access to services but it does so by allowing state administration to monopolize the management of these services, thereby excluding users reduced to mere consumer status. The non-state public of the commons guarantees universal access via user participation in this management. Note that non-state does not mean anti-state, but rather, autonomous from the state. But what are we to make of the state itself? Under what conditions can it itself become a common? And how can we conceptualize its articulation to what belongs to the infra- and supra-state levels? Moreover, how can the different types of commons be organized among themselves? The magnitude of these questions led us to imagine a political system, that of non-centred federalism, which was inspired by Proudhon (1863). Indeed, he designed a dual federation of social and economic organizations, representing the municipalities as well as the production units and working companies, both of which should be governed by the principle of democracy. In a similar way, we can distinguish, on the one hand, the social-economic commons (common of river, common of forest, seed bank, production unit and so on) independently constituted of territoriality and administrative borders and, on the other hand, political commons formed through the process of increasingly integrating territories (municipalities, regions, states, international groupings of states). Yet, in all of this we are neither statists nor anarchists. We are even reluctant to consider a single global government or a single world state, which would imply a centralized form of authority that is incompatible with the democracy required by the institution of the commons. We are supporters of a polyarchic system, which should not be understood as ‘government of the many’ but instead as ‘many governments’ democratically coordinated across the world, which naturally implies a systematic intersection of different types of government, state and non-state, politics, and socio-economics. 4.2.2 Global citizenship These ‘demo-cosmopolitan’ systems will not come from above and they will not emerge from interstate decisions or contractual agreements between private actors. Historically, the exercise of constructive activist citizenship has been an important precursor to the creation of new political institutions. Today, we observe the elements of an authentic political citizenship, which is diverse, decentred and transnational at the same time. This is exemplified by anti-globalization and social movements, in the missions of non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International, in the commitment of certain ecological associations to the COP 21, and via initiatives supporting public aid for migrants, and so on. This is not a citizenship that is expected to gain legal recognition, status, rights or duties as part of a state, but instead one that is called to act, engaging in transnational actions by those Beck calls ‘global public interest entrepreneurs’ (2006). We could also refer to them as global commons actors. This non-state and non-statutory citizenship must be thought of in terms of practices aimed at maintaining or acquiring rights rather than formally granting them. Only such transnational citizenship-in-action can give full meaning to the idea of cosmopolitics: politics for the world, as long as the ‘world’ implies what resonates in the Latin term mundus, namely, not the Earth as a planet and not the totality of individuals living on Earth but instead, the living connection between the individuals inhabiting in and the Earth itself. In this sense, the anti-globalization slogan ‘the world is not for sale’ is more meaningful than it might seem at first sight: the world, in itself, is not a ‘thing’ that we can own; it must be recognized as inappropriable and instituted as a common. 5. Conclusion To conclude, instituting the world as a common cannot be understood as an extension of the nation-state or city-state models at the global level. The democracy of the global commons is irreducible to a mere change of scale. Instead, it requires a genuine collective political invention, which is based on the multiplication of self-government at all levels. What is at stake here is the confrontation between two diametrically opposed logics: whereas the logic of the commons is fundamentally plural, polymorphic, non-centred in nature, the logic of state sovereignty as it was constructed in the West is intrinsically linked to an indivisible and absolute centre of power. The solution is not for several sovereignties to overlap on the same territory, as this would be incompatible with the very notion of sovereignty, but for several types of self-governments to limit each other’s power reciprocally.
Development of space resources is still possible with a commons model. Property rights are not necessary. Existing models governing commons encourage responsible development, numerous examples prove. Saletta Sterling and Orrman-Rossiter 18 Sterling Saletta, Morgan; Orrman-Rossiter, Kevin (2018). Can space mining benefit all of humanity?: The resource fund and citizen's dividend model of Alaska, the ‘last frontier’. Space Policy, (), S0265964616300704–. doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2018.02.002 CT The Outer Space Treaty (OST) came into force in 1967 and, having been ratified by all the major space faring governments as well as some 100 other nations, the Outer Space Treaty serves as the basis for international space law, the current corpus juris spatialis. The treaty declares the exploration and use of outer space shall be for, “the benefit and in the interests of all countries 27” and that outer space, as mentioned previously, “shall be the province of all mankind 27”. With the increased commercialization of space, and the entrance of new actors, both national and private, the OST has come under increased scrutiny, with calls to expand, modify, and even to abrogate it 35,36. Issues surrounding the mining of celestial bodies have received particular attention and debate 37. Of particular concern is the matter of exploitation licences and property rights 38. The OST expressly forbids the “national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by other means” 27 of outer space and celestial bodies. This is frequently interpreted to mean that the OST denies private property claims in outer space, some authors and individuals 39–41 have argued that appropriation by non-nationalentities is allowed. The Outer Space Treaty, and its terrestrial analogues, UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) and the Antarctica Treaty System (ATS) are ‘global commons regimes', though the terminology governing these commons differs and juridical concepts such as “common heritage of humanity” found in UNCLOS (and the Moon Treaty of 1979) and the “common province of mankind” found in the Outer Space Treaty have been interpreted in various manners. Due in part to these varying wordings, interpretations and attendant uncertainties, the need for a more comprehensive framework governing the environmental, ethical, and commercial aspects of space exploration, exploitation and colonization has been highlighted by many authors 30,33,34. Some advocates for the commercial exploitation of space claim that the absence of property rights is a barrier to such ventures, and in particular to the mining of celestial bodies such as the Moon or near earth asteroids 35. Some have gone so far as to suggest an abrogation of the OST in favor of a treaty that allows something like fee-simple ownership and what might best be called a California gold rush approach to outer space resource exploitation 36–38. Advocates of this approach would give something like fee-simple ownership of outer space resources on a ‘first in time, first in right’ basis with no clear licensing regime for such activities 39. In recent US law, Title IV of H.R. 2262- the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, grants ownership of asteroid resources to entities obtaining them but attempts to walk a fine line between this approach and international treaty obligations. It does not grant ownership of asteroid themselves, and explicitly states that resource exploitation must be in accordance with federal laws and existing treaty obligations, i.e. the OST 40. How such eventual exploitation occurs, and under what precise national and international regulatory and licensing regimes, is thus still a matter for the future to decide. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that modifications and additions to the OST based on terrestrial models will provide sufficient guarantee of the right to make profits from the exploitation of outer space resources. Henry Hertzfeld and Frans von der Dunk argue the current regime does not pose a problem for exploitation rights and that terrestrial models would allow private ventures the right to reasonable returns on investment from resource exploitation in space 41. Furthermore, in addition to important, and possibly irreconcilable, differences between a California gold rush style approach and the OST 42, arguments suggesting fee-simple or similar ownership is necessary for profitable private outer space resource exploitation simply do not stand in the face of contrary evidence from numerous terrestrial examples. These include offshore oil drilling, mining, timber and grazing operations in the United States and internationally which are regularly and profitably undertaken without ownership 43. Thus P. M. Sterns and L. I. Tennen argue that the current international regime does provide an adequate framework for commercial development in space, that fee-simple ownership is unnecessary and: “those who advocate the renunciation and abandonment of the nonappropriation principle are either seeking to increase their own bottom line by disingenuous and deceptive constructs, or lack an appropriate appreciation and respect for international processes 44, p. 2439”. Thus, claims that a lack of private property rights in outer space will be a deterrent to commercial resource exploitation ventures in space do not reflect an adequate reflection and analysis of the manner in which current terrestrial practices might be extended into outer space without abrogating the current treaty regime. Nor would a system based on fee simple ownership be likely to tangibly benefit more than a small proportion of the world's population. Instead, the eventual wealth from exploiting celestial bodies would be concentrated in the hands of a few, exacerbating rather than alleviating existing problems for humanity and global sustainable development. The Outer Space Treaty has provided an effective legal framework for the exploration of outer space for over 50 years. Based on the history of treaty regimes governing other international spaces, UNCLOS and the ATS, it seems likely that, in future, additional protocols and agreements will be layered onto the OST and that calls to abrogate and to negotiate a wholly new treaty system are unlikely to succeed. While low participation in the Moon Agreement, also known as the Moon Treaty of 1979, which has not been ratified by either the United States, Russia, or China, has raised questions of legitimacy, it has recently been argued that the Moon Treaty may receive renewed interest in the international community. René Lefeber argues that, far from stifling commercial ventures, the Moon Agreement “provides the best available option for mankind, states and industry to develop space mineral resources in a harmonious way 5, p. 47”, and that, as resource exploitation in outer space now seems likely, the need to elaborate an international regime to prevent conflict over resources may bring other parties to ratify, accede to, or sign the treaty. Ultimately, some form of international governance of outer space as a global commons 45 building on the OST and the current corpus juris spatialis seems both more likely and more desirable than an abrogation of the OST and its replacement with an entirely new treaty regime. Thus, an international regime built upon this existing regime will need to be constructed which takes a balanced approach to space exploration, development and exploitation and which encourages entrepreneurial development but also moves beyond vague utopian platitudes to real and concrete benefits for all of humanity.
3/19/22
JF - AC - Space Commons v3
Tournament: Cal Berkeley | Round: 1 | Opponent: Peninsula AJ | Judge: Tyler, Calvin ac Ambiguities in the OST that allow private appropriation have kicked off a race to develop space, setting the stage for a debris crisis and the domination of space by unaccountable billionaires. Current laws fail due to lax rules and forum shopping. Dovey 21 Ceridwen Dovey, “Space Exploration At What Price?,” Readers Digest Asia Pacific, 5/1/21. https://www.pressreader.com/australia/readers-digest-asia-pacific/20210501/281487869174485 CT One environmental risk all stakeholders agree on is that posed by space debris. There’s already about 5000 satellites in orbit around Earth, of which roughly 2000 are operational, plus hundreds of millions of tiny pieces of debris. Ninety-five per cent of the stuff in low-Earth orbit is classified as ‘space junk’. More space debris makes accessing space costlier in terms of loss of equipment (and possibly of human life). There’s also the risk of the Kessler effect: a cascade of collisions, to the point where the most useful orbital slots become permanently clogged. “We are in the process of messing up space, and most people don’t realise it because we can’t see it the way we can see fish kills, algal blooms or acid rain,” Michael Krepon, an expert on nuclear and space issues, said in 2015. Maybe we’ll understand only when it’s too late, “when we can’t get our satellite television and our telecommunications ... when we get knocked back to the 1950s”. The current clashes over space are rooted in the nitty-gritty of international space law. There are five multilateral UN treaties governing space, most importantly the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), which has been ratified by 109 states, including all major spacefaring nations. It defines outer space as a global commons, the province of all humanity, free to be used and explored “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries”, “on a basis of equality” and only for “peaceful purposes”. Article II of the OST has become the major sticking point in the new space race. It forbids “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”. No nation can make a territorial claim on the Moon or on any other celestial bodies, such as asteroids. While the OST contains no explicit ban of appropriation by private enterprise, Steven Freeland, a professor specialising in space law at Western Sydney University and Australia’s representative to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), says discussions at the time of the OST negotiations clearly show the states parties, including the US, were “of the opinion that Article II prohibited both public and private appropriation”. Yet this perceived legal uncertainty is the loophole that commercial companies are now exploiting. They’ve actively lobbied for an interpretation of OST Article II in the domestic space law of certain countries, to allow for private ownership of resources extracted from the Moon or other celestial bodies. They argue that, because the OST declares all humans are free to “use” space, companies can exercise this right by mining anywhere they like. They won’t claim ownership of the land itself, but will claim ownership of the resources they mine there. They’ve already had a major win in this regard. The space industry lobby in the US put pressure on members of Congress to reinterpret the US’s obligations under international space law, to become more ‘business friendly’. The outcome was the 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, signed into law by President Obama. Since then, companies owned by US citizens have been given the right to claim ownership of – and sell – any resources they mine off-Earth. Further emboldened by the Trump administration, the “commercial space industry is becoming far more aggressive in how it lobbies for its own interests” in the US, Freeland says. There have been Acts proposed in recent years to enable a corporate space culture of “permissionless innovation”, with little regulatory oversight. In a 2017 speech, President Trump’s space law adviser Scott Pace said, “It bears repeating: outer space is not a ‘global commons’, not the ‘common heritage of mankind’, not ‘ res communis’ area of territory that is not subject to legal title of any state, nor is it a public good.” Even if you accept the US government’s interpretation of Article II – that space resources, but not the territory on which they’re located, can be owned – what happens if someone mines an asteroid out of existence, which is an act of outright appropriation? Should the public trust that companies mining in space will do the right thing? We’re still uncovering the full extent of terrestrial mining companies’ cover-ups. For instance, inhouse scientists at Exxon – now Exxon-Mobil, one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world – knew long ago that burning fossil fuels was responsible for global warming, but they actively buried those findings and discredited climate change science for decades. We live in a world where ‘meta-national’ companies can accrue and exercise more wealth and power than traditional nation-states. Silicon Valley is believed to be becoming more powerful than not only Wall Street but also the US government. Branson and other space billionaires like to reassure the masses they’re “democratising” space: just as plane travel started out for the wealthy and gradually became cheaper, so too will space travel. Yet this conveniently overlooks the fact that railroads, airlines and now space industries have all been heavily subsidised by taxpayers. “When we take a step back and notice that private corporations are often even less accountable than governments, then it seems mistaken to say these decisions have been democratised,” Ryan Jenkins, an emerging sciences ethicist at California Polytechnic State University, says. “They’ve merely been privatised.” Lenient supervision. In 2017, Luxembourg – already a corporate tax haven, complicit in international investor tax avoidance and evasion – followed the US’s lead and passed a space-resources law that allows companies to claim resources they extract from space as private property. Guardian journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian recounted a chilling comment from an American space executive: “We just want to work with a government who won’t get in the way.” Companies anywhere in the world can stake resource claims in space under this new law; their only requirement is an office in Luxembourg. This sets a murky precedent of ‘regulatory forum-shopping’, where companies choose to incorporate in states where they’ll be most leniently supervised. In 2018, a Silicon Valley start-up called Swarm Technologies illegally launched four miniature satellites known as CubeSats into space from India. They’d been refused launch permission in the US due to safety concerns over whether the satellites could be tracked once in orbit. Fined US$900,000 by the US Federal Communications Commission, the company was subsequently given permission to start communicating with its satellites, and launched more CubeSats as part of a payload on a SpaceX rocket that November. In January 2019, the company raised $25 million in venture capital. Space start-ups that are prepared – unlike Swarm Technologies – to play by the rules are nonetheless still proposing to launch their own swarms of hundreds or thousands of satellites into very low orbits around Earth. SpaceX has already launched over 1000 internet-beaming Starlink satellites, aiming to have a constellation of at least 30,000 in orbit eventually. The UK’s Royal Astronomical Society said these satellites will “compromise astronomical research” due to light pollution, and questioned why there’d been no proper consultation with the scientific community before launch. Advantage 1: Space Debris Increasing space debris levels inevitably set off a chain of collisions. Chelsea MuñOz-Patchen, 19 - ("Regulating the Space Commons: Treating Space Debris as Abandoned Property in Violation of the Outer Space Treaty," University of Chicago, 2019, 12-6-2021, https://cjil.uchicago.edu/publication/regulating-space-commons-treating-space-debris-abandoned-property-violation-outer-space)//AW Debris poses a threat to functioning space objects and astronauts in space, and may cause damage to the earth’s surface upon re-entry.29 Much of the small debris cannot be tracked due to its size and the velocity at which it travels, making it impossible to anticipate and maneuver to avoid collisions.30 To remain in orbit, debris must travel at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour.31 At this speed even very small pieces of debris can cause serious damage, threatening a spacecraft and causing expensive damage.32 There are millions of these very small pieces, and thousands of larger ones.33 The small-to-medium pieces of debris “continuously shed fragments like lens caps, booster upper stages, nuts, bolts, paint chips, motor sprays of aluminum particles, glass splinters, waste water, and bits of foil,” and may stay in orbit for decades or even centuries, posing an ongoing risk.34 Debris ten centimeters or larger in diameter creates the likelihood of complete destruction for any functioning satellite with which it collides.35 Large nonfunctional objects remaining in orbit are a collision threat, capable of creating huge amounts of space debris and taking up otherwise useful orbit space.36 This issue is of growing importance as more nations and companies gain the ability to launch satellites and other objects into space.37 From February 2009 through the end of 2010, more than thirty-two collision-avoidance maneuvers were reportedly used to avoid debris by various space agencies and satellite companies, and as of March 2012, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) had to take shelter three times due to close calls with passing debris.38 These maneuvers require costly fuel usage and place a strain on astronauts.39 Furthermore, the launches of some spacecraft have “been delayed because of the presence of space debris in the planned flight paths.”40 In 2011, Euroconsult, a satellite consultant, projected that there would be “a 51 increase in satellites launched in the next decade over the number launched in the past decade.”41 In addition to satellites, the rise of commercial space tourism will also increase the number of objects launched into space and thus the amount of debris.42 The more objects are sent into space, and the more collisions create cascades of debris, the greater the risk of damage to vital satellites and other devices relied on for “weather forecasting, telecommunications, commerce, and national security.”43 The Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines44 were created by UNCOPUOS with input from the IADC and adopted in 2007.45 The guidelines were developed to address the problem of space debris and were intended to “increase mutual understanding on acceptable activities in space.”46 These guidelines are nonbinding but suggest best practices to implement at the national level when planning for a launch. Many nations have adopted the guidelines to some degree, and some have gone beyond what the guidelines suggest.47 While the guidelines do not address existing debris, they do much to prevent the creation of new debris. The Kessler Syndrome is the biggest concern with space debris. The Kessler Syndrome is a cascade created when debris hits a space object, creating new debris and setting off a chain reaction of collisions that eventually closes off entire orbits.48 The concern is that this cascade will occur when a tipping point is reached at which the natural removal rate cannot keep up with the amount of new debris added.49 At this point a collision could set off a cascade destroying all space objects within the orbit.50 In 2011, The National Research Council predicted that the Kessler Syndrome could happen within ten to twenty years.51 Donald J. Kessler, the astrophysicist and NASA scientist who theorized the Kessler Syndrome in 1978, believes this cascade may be a century away, meaning that there is still time to develop a solution.52 J. Kessler, the astrophysicist and NASA scientist who theorized the Kessler Syndrome in 1978, believes this cascade may be a century away, meaning that there is still time to develop a solution.52 Space debris is appropriation – permanently occupies and precludes free use. Requires regulation. De Man 19 Philip De Man, Exclusive Use in an Inclusive Environment: The Meaning of the Non-Appropriation Principle for Space Resource Exploitation, Springer (2019) CT It is only when a state refuses to remove a space object whose non-functional status is objectively established, that the exercise of the freedom to use outer space by other states is denied on the basis of an act or negligence that originates from a discretionary exercise of positive authority by a single state not grounded in the actual exercise of its own freedom to explore or use outer space. From this perspective, it is rather diffi cult, if not impossible, to distinguish the refusal to remove nonfunctional satellites at the end of their life from an infringement of Article II OST . Every activity in space entails an exclusion of others. 387 Only when this exclusion is enforced in the absence of justification by the enjoyment of the freedom to explore and use outer space does the denial of the correlative freedom of others amount to an unlawful form of appropriation. For, without use, the justifi cation of exclusivity can only be found in the primordial authority as arrogated by the owner to himself, on this same basis. Though they constitute a minority, a number of authors have construed the refusal to remove inactive satellites as a violation of the principles of the UN space treaties as well. As such, Williams has noted that it is to be wondered whether inactive satellites are complying with the requirements of Article I of the 1967 Space Treaty, particularly the « benefi t and interest of all countries» and «freedom of scientifi c investigation». It is submitted that, on these grounds, inactive satellites using up orbital positions, particularly in the GEO, are open to question. 388 While the author primarily analyses the problem from the perspective of Article I OST , Sterns and Tennen rightly contend that the refusal to remove a derelict craft from orbit is the functional equivalent of appropriation of outer space, prohibited by Article II of the Outer Space Treaty. … Similarly, a nonfunctioning satellite remaining in orbit for an extended period of time could be considered as equivalent to a place-saving object. 389 Combining the fi nality of Articles I and II OST , Fernández-Brital suggests that the placement of non-functional artificial objects in space constitutes a form of appropriation, as it occupies a position that would otherwise be free for the use of others. Though the language is wanting for linguistic accuracy, the author’s observation demonstrates considerable legal perspicacity: as it is a physical truth that two objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time, when somebody leaves a debris sic in outer space, he is performing the appropriation of the place occupied by the same , which is an action forbidden by the Outer Space Treaty as it is known. … The Treaty allows the «use» of outer space. Placing or leaving rubbish in outer space is not using it in accordance with the Treaty, it is against the rules. 390 Considering the unlawful nature of the act of keeping a non-functional satellite in space to be established, Christol then proposes that due consideration would have to be given to the situation where a non-functional space object was occupying an orbital position of great value for telecommunication or factgathering purposes. The presence of such a space object in orbit does not serve the interests of anyone. Thus, legal and practical means must be devised imposing a legal duty on the launching authority to remove or have removed, if it does not have the capabilities, such an object from orbit. The station-keeping procedures which allow it to remain in a preferred orbital position must be employed to put it into a non-utilitarian sic and non-interfering orbit. 391 Such a legal obligation already exists, however. As such, a number of authors have argued that, if Article VIII OST should not yield to the powers of other states to remove the disused space object , the failure to remove such an object or to disown it should be construed as a fault or negligent action, or should at least trigger a presumption to this effect. 392 As to the international obligation that has been violated, it has been suggested that the failure to respect the UN space debris guidelines may serve as a point of reference to determine whether a state has exercised due diligence in launching and operating a space object in the sense of Article IX OST . 393 As the statements of the authors cited above have made clear, however, there is no need to rely on indirect indications derived from a set of unenforceable guidelines to suggest a violation of a binding principle of the Outer Space Treaty. For, by virtue of the failure to fulfi l the conditions of the ITU regulations to acquire the protected use of a particular orbital position, the active refusal to remove a disused space object from its occupied position, considering the conditionality of the right not to be interfered upon actual operation, constitutes a violation of the letter and spirit of the legal system established by Article II jo. Article I OST . Collisions make orbit unusable, causing nuclear war, mass starvation, and economic destruction. Les Johnson 13, Deputy Manager for NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Co-Investigator for the JAXA T-Rex Space Tether Experiment and PI of NASA's ProSEDS Experiment, Master's Degree in Physics from Vanderbilt University, Popular Science Writer, and NASA Technologist, Frequent Contributor to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Sodety and Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Space Society, the World Future Society, and MENSA, Sky Alert!: When Satellites Fail, p. 9-12 language modified Whatever the initial cause, the result may be the same. A satellite destroyed in orbit will break apart into thousands of pieces, each traveling at over 8 km/sec. This virtual shotgun blast, with pellets traveling 20 times faster than a bullet, will quickly spread out, with each pellet now following its own orbit around the Earth. With over 300,000 other pieces of junk already there, the tipping point is crossed and a runaway series of collisions begins. A few orbits later, two of the new debris pieces strike other satellites, causing them to explode into thousands more pieces of debris. The rate of collisions increases, now with more spacecraft being destroyed. Called the "Kessler Effect", after the NASA scientist who first warned of its dangers, these debris objects, now numbering in the millions, cascade around the Earth, destroying every satellite in low Earth orbit. Without an atmosphere to slow them down, thus allowing debris pieces to bum up, most debris (perhaps numbering in the millions) will remain in space for hundreds or thousands of years. Any new satellite will be threatened by destruction as soon as it enters space, effectively rendering many Earth orbits unusable. But what about us on the ground? How will this affect us? Imagine a world that suddenly loses all of its space technology. If you are like most people, then you would probably have a few fleeting thoughts about the Apollo-era missions to the Moon, perhaps a vision of the Space Shuttle launching astronauts into space for a visit to the International Space Station (ISS), or you might fondly recall the "wow" images taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. In short, you would know that things important to science would be lost, but you would likely not assume that their loss would have any impact on your daily life. Now imagine a world that suddenly loses network and cable television, accurate weather forecasts, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation, some cellular phone networks, on-time delivery of food and medical supplies via truck and train to stores and hospitals in virtually every community in America, as well as science useful in monitoring such things as climate change and agricultural sustainability. Add to this the disabling crippling of the US military who now depend upon spy satellites, space-based communications systems, and GPS to know where their troops and supplies are located at all times and anywhere in the world. The result is a nightmarish world, one step away from nuclear war, economic disaster, and potential mass starvation. This is the world in which we are now perilously close to living. Space satellites now touch our lives in many ways. And, unfortunately, these satellites are extremely vulnerable to risks arising from a half-century of carelessness regarding protecting the space environment around the Earth as well as from potential adversaries such as China, North Korea, and Iran. No government policy has put us at risk. It has not been the result of a conspiracy. No, we are dependent upon them simply because they offer capabilities that are simply unavailable any other way. Individuals, corporations, and governments found ways to use the unique environment of space to provide services, make money, and better defend the country. In fact, only a few space visionaries and futurists could have foreseen where the advent of rocketry and space technology would take us a mere 50 years since those first satellites orbited the Earth. It was the slow progression of capability followed by dependence that puts us at risk. The exploration and use of space began in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. The United States soon followed with Explorer 1. Since then, the nations of the world have launched over 8,000 spacecraft. Of these, several hundred are still providing information and services to the global economy and the world's governments. Over time, nations, corporations, and individuals have grown accustomed to the services these spacecraft provide and many are dependent upon them. Commercial aviation, shipping, emergency services, vehicle fleet tracking, financial transactions, and agriculture are areas of the economy that are increasingly reliant on space. Telestar 1, launched into space in the year of my birth, 1962, relayed the world's first live transatlantic news feed and showed that space satellites can be used to relay television signals, telephone calls, and data. The modern telecommunications age was born. We've come a long way since Telstar; most television networks now distribute most, if not ali, of their programming via satellite. Cable television signals are received by local providers from satellite relays before being sent to our homes and businesses using cables. With 65 of US households relying on cable television and a growing percentage using satellite dishes to receive signals from direct-to-home satellite television providers, a large number of people would be cut off from vital information in an emergency should these satellites be destroyed. And communications satellites relay more than television signals. They serve as hosts to corporate video conferences and convey business, banking, and other commercial information to and from all areas of the planet. The first successful weather satellite was TIROS. Launched in 1960, TIROS operated for only 78 days but it served as the precursor for today's much more long-lived weather satellites, which provide continuous monitoring of weather conditions around the world. Without them, providing accurate weather forecasts for virtually any place on the globe more than a day in advance would be nearly impossible. Figure !.1 shows a satellite image of Hurricane Ivan approaching the Alabama Gulf coast in 2004. Without this type of information, evacuation warnings would have to be given more generally, resulting in needless evacuations and lost economic activity (from areas that avoid landfall) and potentially increasing loss of life in areas that may be unexpectedly hit. The formerly top-secret Corona spy satellites began operation in 1959 and provided critical information about the Soviet Union's military and industrial capabilities to a nervous West in a time of unprecedented paranoia and nuclear risk. With these satellites, US military planners were able to understand and assess the real military threat posed by the Soviet Union. They used information provided by spy satellites to help avert potential military confrontations on numerous occasions. Conversely, the Soviet Union's spy satellites were able to observe the United States and its allies, with similar results. It is nearly impossible to move an army and hide it from multiple eyes in the sky. Satellite information is critical to all aspects of US intelligence and military planning. Spy satellites are used to monitor compliance with international arms treaties and to assess the military activities of countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Figure 1.2 shows the capability of modem unclassified space-based imaging. The capability of the classified systems is presumed to be significantly better, providing much more detail. Losing these satellites would place global militaries on high alert and have them operating, literally, in the blind. Our military would suddenly become vulnerable in other areas as well. GPS, a network of 24-32 satellites in medium-Earth orbit, was developed to provide precise position information to the military, and it is now in common use by individuals and industry. The network, which became fully operational in 1993, allows our armed forces to know their exact locations anywhere in the world. It is used to guide bombs to their targets with unprecedented accuracy, requiring that only one bomb be used to destroy a target that would have previously required perhaps hundreds of bombs to destroy in the pre-GPS world (which, incidentally, has resulted in us reducing our stockpile of non-GPS-guided munitions dramatically). It allows soldiers to navigate in the dark or in adverse weather or sandstorms. Without GPS, our military advantage over potential adversaries would be dramatically reduced or eliminated.
Advantage 2: Corporate Colonialism Tech-billionaires advance a vision of private space colonization as a source of infinite resources to cure society’s ills, which rationalizes unrestrained consumption and replicates the logic of imperialism. Mccormick 21 Ted McCormick writes about the history of science, empire, and economic thought. He has a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and teaches at Concordia University in Montreal. “The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world”. 8-15-2021. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-billionaire-space-race-reflects-a-colonial-mindset-that-fails-to-imagine-a-different-world-165235. Accessed 12-15-2021; marlborough JH It was a time of political uncertainty, cultural conflict and social change. Private ventures exploited technological advances and natural resources, generating unprecedented fortunes while wreaking havoc on local communities and environments. The working poor crowded cities, spurring property-holders to develop increased surveillance and incarceration regimes. Rural areas lay desolate, buildings vacant, churches empty — the stuff of moralistic elegies. ¶Epidemics raged, forcing quarantines in the ports and lockdowns in the streets. Mortality data was the stuff of weekly news and commentary. ¶Depending on the perspective, mobility — chosen or compelled — was either the cause or the consequence of general disorder. Uncontrolled mobility was associated with political instability, moral degeneracy and social breakdown. However, one form of planned mobility promised to solve these problems: colonization. ¶Europe and its former empires have changed a lot since the 17th century. But the persistence of colonialism as a supposed panacea suggests we are not as far from the early modern period as we think. ¶Colonial promise of limitless growth ¶Seventeenth-century colonial schemes involved plantations around the Atlantic, and motivations that now sound archaic. Advocates of expansion such as the English writer Richard Hakluyt, whose Discourse of Western Planting (1584) outlined the benefits of empire for Queen Elizabeth: the colonization of the New World would prevent Spanish Catholic hegemony and provide a chance to claim Indigenous souls for Protestantism. ¶But a key promise was the economic and social renewal of the mother country through new commodities, trades and territory. Above all, planned mobility would cure the ills of apparent overpopulation. Sending the poor overseas to cut timber, mine gold or farm cane would, according to Hakluyt, turn the “multitudes of loiterers and idle vagabonds” that “swarm(ed)” England’s streets and “pestered and stuffed” its prisons into industrious workers, providing raw materials and a reason to multiply. Colonization would fuel limitless growth. ¶As English plantations took shape in Ulster, Virginia, New England and the Caribbean, “projectors” — individuals (nearly always men) who promised to use new kinds of knowledge to radically and profitably transform society — tied mobility to new sciences and technologies. They were inspired as much by English philosopher Francis Bacon’s vision of a tech-centred state in The New Atlantis as by his advocacy of observation and experiment. ¶Discovery and invention ¶The English agriculturalist Gabriel Plattes cautioned in 1639 that “the finding of new worlds is not like to be a perpetual trade.” But many more saw a supposedly vacant America as an invitation to transplant people, plants and machinery. ¶The inventor Cressy Dymock (from Lincolnshire, where fen-drainage schemes were turning wetlands dry) sought support for a “perpetual motion engine” that would plough fields in England, clear forest in Virginia and drive sugar mills in Barbados. Dymock identified private profit and the public good by speeding plantation and replacing costly draught animals with cheaper enslaved labour. Projects across the empire would employ the idle, create “elbow-room,” heal “unnatural divisions” and make England “the garden of the world.” ¶Extraterrestrial exploration ¶Today, the moon and Mars are in projectors’ sights. And the promises billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos make for colonization are similar in ambition to those of four centuries ago. ¶As Bezos told an audience at the International Space Development Conference in 2018: “We will have to leave this planet, and we’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better.” Bezos traces his thinking to Princeton physicist Gerald O’Neill, whose 1974 article “The Colonization of Space” (and 1977 book, The High Frontier) presented orbiting settlements as solutions to nearly every major problem facing the Earth. Bezos echoes O’Neill’s proposal to move heavy industry — and industrial labour — off the planet, rezoning Earth as a mostly residential, green space. A garden, as it were. ¶Musk’s plans for Mars are at once more cynical and more grandiose, in timeline and technical requirements if not in ultimate extent. They center on the dubious possibility of “terraforming” Mars using resources and technologies that don’t yet exist. ¶Musk planned to send the first humans to Mars in 2024, and by 2030, he envisioned breaking ground on a city, launching as many as 100,000 voyages from Earth to Mars within a century. ¶As of 2020, the timeline had been pushed back slightly, in part because terraforming may require bombarding Mars with 10,000 nuclear missiles to start. But the vision – a Mars of thriving crops, pizza joints and “entrepreneurial opportunities,” preserving life and paying dividends while Earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable — remains. Like the colonial company-states of the 17th and 18th centuries, Musk’s SpaceX leans heavily on government backing but will make its own laws on its newly settled planet. ¶A failure of the imagination ¶The techno-utopian visions of Musk and Bezos betray some of the same assumptions as their early modern forebears. They offer colonialism as a panacea for complex social, political and economic ills, rather than attempting to work towards a better world within the constraints of our environment. ¶And rather than facing the palpably devastating consequences of an ideology of limitless growth on our planet, they seek to export it, unaltered, into space. They imagine themselves capable of creating liveable environments where none exist. ¶But for all their futuristic imagery, they have failed to imagine a different world. And they have ignored the history of colonialism on this one. Empire never recreated Eden, but it did fuel centuries of growth based on expropriation, enslavement and environmental transformation in defiance of all limits. We are struggling with these consequences today. If only wealthy elites can tap the vast resources of outer space, we lock in a permanent and unconscionable inequality. Private space colonization amounts to unchecked exploitation and authoritarian corporate control of future settlements. Spencer ‘17 Spencer, Keith A. senior editor at Salon “Keep the Red Planet Red.” Jacobin, 2 May 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/mars-elon-musk-space-exploration-nasa-colonization. Accesserd 12/15/2021 marlborough JH As the Western liberal order continues to unravel, can you really blame anyone who wants to get off this planet? Since space travel became technologically feasible in the twentieth century, many thinkers — from Arthur C. Clarke to Buckminster Fuller — envisioned the human colonization of other planets as all but inevitable. “Man will not always stay on Earth,” wrote Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, “the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.” In their heydays, both the American and Soviet space programs funded research into Mars colonization, viewing it as the next logical step for humanity. In the past two decades however, people have started to pin their hopes for intergalactic travel on private groups instead of public agencies. While President Obama was privatizing much of the American space program, a flurry of ventures released competing proposals to visit and/or colonize the red planet. These schemes’ feasibility and harebrained-ness vary: the Mars Foundation, run by multimillionaire former investor Dennis Tito, is soliciting private donations to send a couple on a flyby of the red planet. Mars One, a Dutch nonprofit, wants to fund a permanent human colony through “merchandise sales, ads on video content, brand partnerships, speaking engagements, broadcasting rights, intellectual property rights, games and apps, and events.” The most famous — and perhaps most likely to succeed — comes from entrepreneur and engineer Elon Musk, the multibillionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Musk’s articulation of his Mars mission reveals not only what’s wrong with how we think about extraterrestrial colonies and resources, but also how little faith most people have in democracy here on Earth. Interplanetary Technocracy Given his reputation as an engineering genius, Musk’s vision for colonization seems the most plausible of the private missions to Mars. After all, SpaceX, which he admitted to founding specifically to colonize the solar system, became the first private company to successfully launch a rocket into orbit in 2008. In September 2016, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Musk laid out a detailed vision for his colonization project, including financial estimates, engineering specs for the reusable “Interplanetary Transit System,” and the price of a passenger ticket — around $200,000. Musk’s presentation even included a snazzy computer-animated video of the transit system in action and details about the long trip there, which would offer colonists games, restaurants, and entertainment. “It’ll be, like, really fun to go . . . You’re gonna have a great time,” Musk said. His approach to colonizing Mars comes straight out of Silicon Valley’s playbook: Musk has taken a “problem” — how to colonize Mars — and hacked a feasible “solution” that is one part engineering, one part moxie. Just add investors and we’ll be building cities on the red planet in no time. Though vague, Musk reiterated that his vision would need funding. His talk of “tickets” implies that colonists will likely pay for much of the mission. Unlike a space agency’s astronaut selection process, then, his Mars mission will be limited to those who can afford it. In that sense, Musk’s colonization plan looks a lot like joining a country club or gated community — or any other model of private access to space for those who can afford it. Musk’s proposal — heavy on the engineering and business details, light on the philosophical or political implications of colonization — epitomizes technocracy. He doesn’t seem interested in thinking through Mars’s policy or governance, the labor necessitated by building a civilization from scratch, or the problems that will arise from sending rich tourists to self-manage in a place with scant resources demanding communal organization and thinking. The True Value of Mars For some, sending a few rich folks off to Mars seems like a great idea. After all, it’s hardly an Eden waiting to be destroyed. Unlike previous colonial projects, there are no natives to exploit; no wildlife to hunt to extinction; no ecosystem to radically alter; no fossil fuels to extract; and no climate in danger of destruction from carbon emission. Mars’s atmosphere is already 96 percent carbon dioxide! Why not let Musk and his millionaire buddies take off for a few rounds of golf on the frosted dunes? If they get stuck there, all the better. From a humanistic perspective, however, even a lifeless world like Mars holds incredible scientific, educational, and environmental value. To let private interests colonize, terraform, or populate it without considering this collective value would be short-sighted. Indeed, when it comes to colonization, we should hope humanity has learned from its past mistakes and is ready to set upon a more democratic process. Perhaps Earth can agree to hold a public discussion before we set about strip-mining Mars’s glorious dunes, vistas, and mountains, lest the tallest mountain in the solar system become a trash heap like Everest. Government space agencies have gone to great lengths to keep the scientific and social benefits of publicly funded exploration intact. This is why NASA makes all its mission data public, and also why it insists on sterilizing space probes to avoid contaminating other worlds with cellular life from Earth — one stray terrestrial extremophile could confuse the search for microbial life off-planet. The agency, recognizing its work’s educational value, has sent elementary school children’s experiments into space and hosted public naming competitions for geographic features. Likewise, NASA thinks beyond the engineering challenges: they also consider space travel’s psychological and biological effects, surely an important field of study in anticipation of the long space flights required for interplanetary travel. Private industry will be unlikely to follow these collective practices, as its desire for profit or for exclusive property rights — physical and intellectual — will outweigh any public benefit. I Want to Believe The public and media reaction to Musk’s presentation — more than the presentation itself —reflects the current state of our politics. “The mood at the conference was almost as giddy as a rock concert or the launch of a new Apple product, with people lining up for Mr. Musk’s presentation a couple of hours in advance,” wrote Kenneth Chang in the New York Times, who devoted 1,200 words to it. “Elon Musk finally told the world his vision for colonizing Mars, and it turned out to be one hell of a show,” exclaimed Loren Grush in a video article for the Verge. Grush noted that Musk drew an “insane crowd,” describing how “people actually stampeded into the hall where his lecture was in order to get a good seat.” He began in lofty tones: “I want to . . . make Mars seem possible. Make it seem as though it is something we can do in our lifetimes.” This statement implied that we needed some great technological leap forward before embarking on this adventure, but, in fact, travel to Mars has been possible for well over half a century. Given the political will, we can go right now. The subtext of Musk’s message, then, was that our democratic governments will never execute big science and engineering projects. People should trust in the private vision for colonization and space travel instead. In Earth politics, this lack of faith in democratic institutions is nothing new. This idea’s policy implications — that collectively we can’t have big public projects or any sort of real democratic decision-making, and must cede our whims to privately funded foundations and technocratic “experts” — have already taken hold of most countries. As far as I could find, none of the magazines that covered Musk’s announcement mentioned this metatheme, namely, that a public and democratically organized colonization of Mars will never happen. No one questioned the premise that we must let billionaires decide how and when to go to Mars — or that it is the only possible way to get there. Musk’s tech-industry social circle benefits from branding technology as synonymous with progress. As a result, many tech employees work long hours to achieve this invisible notion of progress, but their work just fattens their employer’s profit margins. One can imagine the grueling labor required to make an inhospitable planet habitable. On Mars, employees would exhaust themselves for a corporation under the guise of “survival.” After all, regardless of whether a foundation or a corporation spearheads the colonization effort, they will be incentivized, even forty million miles away, to squeeze as much labor out of their workers at the lowest cost. Further, the question of who is allowed to go to Mars will become as important as the question of who isn’t. If, as Musk proposes, the trip requires a “ticket” — which, as he claims, will eventually drop to only $100,000 — it seems probable that those who can afford to go will mostly resemble, ethnically and politically, Earth’s ruling class. Imagine: the red planet turned racist country club. These questions matter more than how to engineer a rocket or how to build greenhouses or how to harvest water. In fact, state-funded research has already largely solved these technical problems — or, at the least, led to numerous creative ideas about making a Mars colony self-sufficient. The Martian Commons Any colonization effort on Mars — even if only a small number of humans go — will present huge political challenges in terms of the labor and personal rights of its citizens. To wit: what kinds of reproductive restrictions will exist on a planet of scarce resources? How will colonists ration food and activity? What about personal privacy? If Martian citizens are working in a life-or-death situation, can the workers strike? At least in its early years, Mars would have a scarcity economy — in other words, resources would likely have to be rationed in order for the collective to survive. A private colony would be unlikely to make any kind of egalitarian guarantee — after all, if there’s a ticket price, there will certainly be a Martian service economy pampering the space tourists. Inequalities will emerge in terms of labor, housing, food, and access to other resources. In fact, we already know what a privatized Mars might resemble: Mount Everest. At higher elevations, it becomes a barren, lifeless, cold world, where climbers require oxygen tanks to survive. The cost of ascending is as steep as the mountain: between $30,000 to $100,000. Climbers’ journeys are only made possible by their Sherpas’ exploited labor, many of whom die in accidents and are paid as little as $5,000 a year by Western companies. Now imagine this situation replicated forty million miles off, on a lifeless planet, where two-way Earth communication takes almost an hour, and you can envision how dire things could get. A New Hope Musk spent nearly an hour of his speech detailing the technological aspects of Mars travel: the landers, the rockets, the fuel costs, and so on. Musk takes a technology-first approach and rarely mentions the numerous social aspects. His speech and its collective reactions attest to a naïve, John Galt fantasy about how policy and engineering come to pass: through the mind of the lone genius, who alone holds the key to humanity’s future. We saw the same fantasy at work last week when, in the wake of President Trump’s executive order banning emigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced his plan to hire ten thousand refugees and was immediately hailed as a liberal hero. The message was clear: we can’t hope to help refugees ourselves, or on a democratic basis — we must rely on the whims of the rich to push forward progressive causes. Alas, the reaction to Musk’s speech also demonstrates how public sentiment has changed: collectively, we no longer believe in public space exploration. Even if we know state agencies can launch a Mars mission, few think it will happen. This doesn’t bode well for how we think of the commons. Are rich people and their foundations the only ones who can save us? The plethora of private Mars proposals reflects a lack of faith in democracy on Earth, in particular in our democratic influence over the directions science and engineering research take. And while faith in public institutions sits at an all-time low, we seem more than happy to hear what the rich can make possible and to believe their promises. Musk is just one of many technocrats who think of a Mars voyage as a technological problem. Not only is it not a technological problem, it’s not even a problem. Colonization of Mars should be seen as a complex social and political policy, with so much potential to create inequality and oppression that it cannot rationally be undertaken without political consensus and a stratagem for maintaining democracy and egalitarianism. We are ready to colonize Mars, and have been for half a century. Doing so without a democratic plan will present unimaginable dangers for the planet and colonists alike. As socialists, our rallying cry should be this: Keep the red planet red! Private expansion into space results in corporate colonization of planets that undermines the interests of the rest of humanity. Spencer ’17 Spencer, Keith A. senior editor at Salon“Against Mars-a-Lago: Why SpaceX's Mars Colonization Plan Should Terrify You.” Salon, Salon.com, Oct. 8 2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/10/08/against-mars-a-lago-why-spacexs-mars-colonization-plan-should-terrify-you/. When CEO Elon Musk announced last month that his aerospace company SpaceX would be sending cargo missions to Mars by 2022 — the first step in his tourism-driven colonization plan — a small cheer went up among space and science enthusiasts. Writing in the New York Post, Stephen Carter called Musk’s vision “inspiring,” a salve for politically contentious times. “Our species has turned its vision inward; our image of human possibility has grown cramped and pessimistic,” Carter wrote: "We dream less of reaching the stars than of winning the next election; less of maturing as a species than of shunning those who are different; less of the blessings of an advanced technological tomorrow than of an apocalyptic future marked by a desperate struggle to survive. Maybe a focus on the possibility of reaching our nearest planetary neighbor will help change all that." The Post editorial reflected a growing media consensus that humankind’s ultimate destiny is the colonization of the solar system — yet on a private basis. American government leaders generally agree with this vision. Obama egged on the privatization of NASA by legislating a policy shift to private commercial spaceflight, awarding government contracts to private companies like SpaceX to shuttle supplies to the International Space Station. “Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to make profit, finds ways to expand humanity,” said Dr. S. Pete Worden, the director of the NASA Ames Research lab, in 2012. And in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Vice President Mike Pence wrote of his ambitions to bring American-style capitalism to the stars: “In the years to come, American industry must be the first to maintain a constant commercial human presence in low-Earth orbit, to expand the sphere of the economy beyond this blue marble,” Pence wrote. One wonders if these luminaries know their history. There has been no instance in which a private corporation became a colonizing power that did not end badly for everyone besides the shareholders. The East India Company is perhaps the finest portent of Musk’s Martian ambitions. In 1765, the East India Company forced the Mughal emperor to sign a legal agreement that would essentially permit their company to become the de facto rulers of Bengal. The East India Company then collected taxes and used its private army, which was over 200,000 strong by the early 19th century, to repress those who got in the way of its profit margins. “It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath,” writes William Dalrymple in the Guardian. “It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history.” The East India Company came to colonize much of the Indian subcontinent. In the modern era, an era in which the right of corporations to do what they want, unencumbered, has become a sacrosanct right in the eyes of many politicians, the lessons of the East India Company seem to have been all but forgotten. As Dalrymple writes: Democracy as we know it was considered an advance over feudalism because of the power that it gave the commoners to share in collective governance. To privately colonize a nation, much less a planet, means ceding governance and control back to corporations whose interest is not ours, and indeed, is always at odds with workers and residents — particularly in a resource-limited environment like a spaceship or the red planet. Even if, as Musk suggests, a private foundation is put in charge of running the show on Mars, their interests will inherently be at odds with the workers and employees involved. After all, a private foundation is not a democracy; and as major philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation illustrate, often do the bidding of their rich donors, and take an important role in ripening industries and regions for exploitation by Western corporations. Yet Mars’ colonization is a bit different than Bengal, namely in that it is not merely underdeveloped; it is undeveloped. How do you start an entirely new economy on a virgin world with no industry? After all, Martian resource extraction and trade with Earth is not feasible; the cost of transporting material across the solar system is astronomical, and there are no obvious minerals on Mars that we don’t already have in abundance on Earth. The only basis for colonization of Mars that Musk can conceive of is one based on tourism: the rich pay an amount — Musk quotes the ticket price at $200,000 if he can get 1 million tourists to pay that — that entitles them to a round-trip ticket. And while they’re on Mars and traveling to it, they luxuriate: Musk has assured that the trip would be “fun.” This is what makes Musk’s Mars vision so different than, say, the Apollo missions or the International Space Station. This isn’t really exploration for humanity’s sake — there’s not that much science assumed here, as there was in the Moon missions. Musk wants to build the ultimate luxury package, exclusively for the richest among us. Musk isn’t trying to build something akin to Matt Damon’s spartan research base in "The Martian." He wants to build Mars-a-Lago. And an economy based on tourism, particularly high-end tourism, needs employees — even if a high degree of automation is assumed. And as I’ve written about before, that means a lot of labor at the lowest cost possible. Imagine signing away years of your life to be a housekeeper in the Mars-a-Lago hotel, with your communications, water, food, energy usage, even oxygen tightly managed by your employer, and no government to file a grievance to if your employer cuts your wages, harasses you, cuts off your oxygen. Where would Mars-a-Lago's employees turn if their rights were impinged upon? Oh wait, this planet is run privately? You have no rights. Musk's vision for Mars colonization is inherently authoritarian. The potential for the existence of the employees of the Martian tourism industry to slip into something resembling indentured servitude, even slavery, cannot be underestimated. We have government regulations for a reason on Earth — to protect us from the fresh horror Musk hopes to export to Mars. If he's considered these questions, he doesn't seem to care; for Musk, the devil's in the technological and financial details. The social and political are pretty uninteresting to him. This is unsurprising; accounts from those who have worked closely with him hint that he, like many CEOs, may be a sociopath. Even as a space enthusiast, I cannot get excited about the private colonization of Mars. You shouldn’t be either. This is not a giant leap for mankind; this is the next great leap in plutocracy. The mere notion that global wealth is so unevenly distributed that a small but sufficient sum of rich people could afford this trip is unsettling, indicative of the era of astonishing economic inequality in which we suffer. Thomas Frank, writing in Harpers, once wrote of a popular t-shirt he sighted while picnicking in a small West Virginia coal town: “Mine it union or keep it in the ground.” The idea, of course, is that the corporations interested in resource extraction do not care whatsoever about their workers’ health, safety, or well-being; the union had their interests at heart, and was able to negotiate for safety, job security, and so on. I’d like to see a similar t-shirt or bumper sticker emerge among scientists and space enthusiasts: “Explore Mars democratically, or keep it in the sky.” Neoliberalism destroys ethics, locks in exploitation, decimates the environment, and causes war. Werlhof 15 – Claudia, Professor of Political Science/Women's Studies, University Innsbruck (Austria), 2015 (“Neoliberal Globalization: Is There an Alternative to Plundering the Earth?” Global Research, May 25th, Available Online at http://www.globalresearch.ca/neoliberal-globalization-is-there-an-alternative-to-plundering-the-earth/24403) At the center of both old and new economic liberalism lies: Self-interest and individualism; segregation of ethical principles and economic affairs, in other words: a process of ‘de-bedding’ economy from society; economic rationality as a mere cost-benefit calculation and profit maximization; competition as the essential driving force for growth and progress; specialization and the replacement of a subsistence economy with profit-oriented foreign trade (‘comparative cost advantage’); and the proscription of public (state) interference with market forces.3 Where the new economic liberalism outdoes the old is in its global claim. Today’s economic liberalism functions as a model for each and everyone: all parts of the economy, all sectors of society, of life/nature itself. As a consequence, the once “de-bedded” economy now claims to “im-bed” everything, including political power. Furthermore, a new twisted “economic ethics” (and with it a certain idea of “human nature”) emerges that mocks everything from so-called do-gooders to altruism to selfless help to care for others to a notion of responsibility.4 This goes as far as claiming that the common good depends entirely on the uncontrolled egoism of the individual and, especially, on the prosperity of transnational corporations. The allegedly necessary “freedom” of the economy – which, paradoxically, only means the freedom of corporations – hence consists of a freedom from responsibility and commitment to society. The maximization of profit itself must occur within the shortest possible time; this means, preferably, through speculation and “shareholder value”. It must meet as few obstacles as possible. Today, global economic interests outweigh not only extra-economic concerns but also national economic considerations since corporations today see themselves beyond both community and nation.5 A “level playing field” is created that offers the global players the best possible conditions. This playing field knows of no legal, social, ecological, cultural or national “barriers”.6 As a result, economic competition plays out on a market that is free of all non-market, extra-economic or protectionist influences – unless they serve the interests of the big players (the corporations), of course. The corporations’ interests – their maximal growth and progress – take on complete priority. This is rationalized by alleging that their well-being means the well-being of small enterprises and workshops as well. The difference between the new and the old economic liberalism can first be articulated in quantitative terms: after capitalism went through a series of ruptures and challenges – caused by the “competing economic system”, the crisis of capitalism, post-war “Keynesianism” with its social and welfare state tendencies, internal mass consumer demand (so-called Fordism), and the objective of full employment in the North. The liberal economic goals of the past are now not only euphorically resurrected but they are also “globalized”. The main reason is indeed that the competition between alternative economic systems is gone. However, to conclude that this confirms the victory of capitalism and the “golden West” over “dark socialism” is only one possible interpretation. Another – opposing – interpretation is to see the “modern world system” (which contains both capitalism and socialism) as having hit a general crisis which causes total and merciless competition over global resources while leveling the way for investment opportunities, i.e. the valorization of capital.7 The ongoing globalization of neoliberalism demonstrates which interpretation is right. Not least, because the differences between the old and the new economic liberalism can not only be articulated in quantitative terms but in qualitative ones too. What we are witnessing are completely new phenomena: instead of a democratic “complete competition” between many small enterprises enjoying the freedom of the market, only the big corporations win. In turn, they create new market oligopolies and monopolies of previously unknown dimensions. The market hence only remains free for them, while it is rendered unfree for all others who are condemned to an existence of dependency (as enforced producers, workers and consumers) or excluded from the market altogether (if they have neither anything to sell or buy). About fifty percent of the world’s population fall into this group today, and the percentage is rising.8 Anti-trust laws have lost all power since the transnational corporations set the norms. It is the corporations – not “the market” as an anonymous mechanism or “invisible hand” – that determine today’s rules of trade, for example prices and legal regulations. This happens outside any political control. Speculation with an average twenty percent profit margin edges out honest producers who become “unprofitable”.9 Money becomes too precious for comparatively non-profitable, long-term projects, or projects that only – how audacious! – serve a good life. Money instead “travels upwards” and disappears. Financial capital determines more and more what the markets are and do.10 By delinking the dollar from the price of gold, money creation no longer bears a direct relationship to production”.11 Moreover, these days most of us are – exactly like all governments – in debt. It is financial capital that has all the money – we have none.12 Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances are below average in comparison to speculation – rather: spookulation – wins. The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-for-profit economy and administration, is “slimmed” and its “profitable” parts (“gems”) handed to corporations (privatized). As a consequence, social services that are necessary for our existence disappear. Small and medium private businesses – which, until recently, employed eighty percent of the workforce and provided normal working conditions – are affected by these developments as well. The alleged correlation between economic growth and secure employment is false. When economic growth is accompanied by the mergers of businesses, jobs are lost.13 If there are any new jobs, most are precarious, meaning that they are only available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not enough to make a living.14 This means that the working conditions in the North become akin to those in the South, and the working conditions of men akin to those of women – a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor without union affiliation. This has already been happening since the 1970s in the “Export Processing Zones” (EPZs, “world market factories” or “maquiladoras”), where most of the world’s computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods are produced.15 The EPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of cheap labor.16 The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to armaments is a particularly troubling development.17 It is not only commodity production that is “outsourced” and located in the EPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution, meaning the development of new information and communication technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely due to computerization, also in administrative fields.18 The combination of the principles of “high tech” and “low wage”/”no wage” (always denied by “progress” enthusiasts) guarantees a “comparative cost advantage” in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to “Chinese wages” in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European, Chinese or Indian. The means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially since finance capital – rendered precarious itself – controls asset values ever more aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through the “clearance” of public property and the transformation of formerly public and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector. This concerns primarily fields that have long been (at least partly) excluded from the logic of profit – e.g. education, health, energy or water supply/disposal. New forms of so-called enclosures emerge from today’s total commercialization of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the “commons”, and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc.19 As far as the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing frantic efforts to bring these under private control as well.20 All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a continuation of the history of so-called original accumulation which has expanded globally, in accordance with to the motto: “Growth through expropriation!”21 Most people have less and less access to the means of production, and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction of the welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely on the community to provide for them in times of need. Our existence relies exclusively on private, i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less reliable than public services. (It is a myth that the private always outdoes the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by the colonial South. The old claim that the South will eventually develop into the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the South. We are witnessing the latest form of “development”, namely, a world system of underdevelopment.22 Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand.23 This might even dawn on “development aid” workers soon. It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”) in the household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid “housewifized” work outside.24 Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the work.25 Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution, one of today’s biggest global industries.26 This illustrates two things: a) how little the “emancipation” of women actually leads to “equal terms” with men; and b) that “capitalist development” does not imply increased “freedom” in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long time.27 If the latter were the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism once it reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely. Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist in the “world system.”28 The authoritarian model of the “Export Processing Zones” is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – from the bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing. It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of colonialism but, to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new “colonization of the world”29 points back to the beginnings of the “modern world system” in the “long 16th century”, when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation and colonial transformation allowed for the rise and “development” of Europe.30 The so-called “children’s diseases” of modernity keep on haunting it, even in old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernity’s latest stage. They are expanding instead of disappearing. Where there is no South, there is no North; where there is no periphery, there is no center; where there is no colony, there is no – in any case no “Western” – civilization.31 Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly becoming a corporate colony (particularly of German corporations). This, however, does not keep it from being an active colonizer itself, especially in the East.32 Social, cultural, traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global resources that we still have – natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools – have turned into objects of utilization. Rapid ecological destruction through depletion is the consequence. If one makes more profit by cutting down trees than by planting them, then there is no reason not to cut them.33 Neither the public nor the state interferes, despite global warming and the obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining rain forests will irreversibly destroy the earth’s climate – not to mention the many other negative effects of such actions.34 Climate, animal, plants, human and general ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of the corporations – no matter that the rain forest is not a renewable resource and that the entire earth’s ecosystem depends on it. If greed, and the rationalism with which it is economically enforced, really was an inherent anthropological trait, we would have never even reached this day. The commander of the Space Shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning”. She meant the Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more rain clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo’s natural resources that are the reason for the wars that plague the region today. After all, one needs diamonds and coltan for mobile phones. Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities, i.e. everything becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which truly means liquidation, the transformation of all into liquid money). In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost-intensive and preferably “wageless” commodity production. The objective is to transform everyone and everything into commodities, including life itself.35 We are racing blindly towards the violent and absolute conclusion of this “mode of production”, namely total capitalization/liquidation by “monetarization”.36 We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of the market – we are witnessing what can be described as “market fundamentalism”. People believe in the market as if it was a god. There seems to be a sense that nothing could ever happen without it. Total global maximized accumulation of money/capital as abstract wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity. A “free” world market for everything has to be established – a world market that functions according to the interests of the corporations and capitalist money. The installment of such a market proceeds with dazzling speed. It creates new profit possibilities where they have not existed before, e.g. in Iraq, Eastern Europe or China. One thing remains generally overlooked: the abstract wealth created for accumulation implies the destruction of nature as concrete wealth. The result is a “hole in the ground” and next to it a garbage dump with used commodities, outdated machinery and money without value.37 However, once all concrete wealth (which today consists mainly of the last natural resources) will be gone, abstract wealth will disappear as well. It will, in Marx’s words, “evaporate”. The fact that abstract wealth is not real wealth will become obvious, and so will the answer to the question of which wealth modern economic activity has really created. In the end it is nothing but monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually or on accounts) that constitutes a monoculture controlled by a tiny minority. Diversity is suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive. And really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production nor money? The nihilism of our economic system is evident. The whole world will be transformed into money – and then it will disappear. After all, money cannot be eaten. What no one seems to consider is the fact that it is impossible to re-transform commodities, money, capital and machinery into nature or concrete wealth. It seems that underlying all “economic development” is the assumption that “resources”, the “sources of wealth”,38 are renewable and everlasting – just like the “growth” they create.39 The notion that capitalism and democracy are one is proven a myth by neoliberalism and its “monetary totalitarianism”.40 The primacy of politics over economy has been lost. Politicians of all parties have abandoned it. It is the corporations that dictate politics. Where corporate interests are concerned, there is no place for democratic convention or community control. Public space disappears. The res publica turns into a res privata, or – as we could say today – a res privata transnationale (in its original Latin meaning, privare means “to deprive”). Only those in power still have rights. They give themselves the licenses they need, from the “license to plunder” to the “license to kill”.41 Those who get in their way or challenge their “rights” are vilified, criminalized and to an increasing degree defined as “terrorists” or, in the case of defiant governments, as “rogue states” – a label that usually implies threatened or actual military attack, as we can see in the cases of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe Syria and Iran in the near future. U.S. President Bush had even spoken of the possibility of “preemptive” nuclear strikes should the U.S. feel endangered by weapons of mass destruction.42 The European Union did not object.43 Neoliberalism and war are two sides of the same coin.44 Free trade, piracy and war are still “an inseparable three” – today maybe more so than ever. War is not only “good for the economy” but is indeed its driving force and can be understood as the “continuation of economy with other means”.45 War and economy have become almost indistinguishable.46 Wars about resources – especially oil and water – have already begun.47 The Gulf Wars are the most obvious examples. Militarism once again appears as the “executor of capital accumulation” – potentially everywhere and enduringly.48 Human rights and rights of sovereignty have been transferred from people, communities and governments to corporations.49 The notion of the people as a sovereign body has practically been abolished. We have witnessed a coup of sorts. The political systems of the West and the nation state as guarantees for and expression of the international division of labor in the modern world system are increasingly dissolving.50 Nation states are developing into “periphery states” according to the inferior role they play in the proto-despotic “New World Order”.51 Democracy appears outdated. After all, it “hinders business”.52 The “New World Order” implies a new division of labor that does no longer distinguish between North and South, East and West – today, everywhere is South. An according International Law is established which effectively functions from top to bottom (“top-down”) and eliminates all local and regional communal rights. And not only that: many such rights are rendered invalid both retroactively and for the future.53 The logic of neoliberalism as a sort of totalitarian neo-mercantilism is that all resources, all markets, all money, all profits, all means of production, all “investment opportunities”, all rights and all power belong to the corporations only. To paraphrase Richard Sennett: “Everything to the Corporations!”54 One might add: “Now!” The corporations are free to do whatever they please with what they get. Nobody is allowed to interfere. Ironically, we are expected to rely on them to find a way out of the crisis we are in. This puts the entire globe at risk since responsibility is something the corporations do not have or know. The times of social contracts are gone.55 In fact, pointing out the crisis alone has become a crime and all critique will soon be defined as “terror” and persecuted as such.56 IMF Economic Medicine Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements (which are cynically labeled as “IMF uprisings”), and facilitate the lucrative business of reconstruction.57 In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher introduced neoliberalism in Anglo-America. In 1989, the so-called “Washington Consensus” was formulated. It claimed to lead to global freedom, prosperity and economic growth through “deregulation, liberalization and privatization”. This has become the credo and promise of all neoliberals. Today we know that the promise has come true for the corporations only – not for anybody else. In the Middle East, the Western support for Saddam Hussein in the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, and the Gulf War of the early 1990s, announced the permanent U.S. presence in the world’s most contested oil region. In continental Europe, neoliberalism began with the crisis in Yugoslavia caused by the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF. The country was heavily exploited, fell apart and finally beset by a civil war over its last remaining resources.58 Since the NATO war in 1999, the Balkans are fragmented, occupied and geopolitically under neoliberal control.59 The region is of main strategic interest for future oil and gas transport from the Caucasus to the West (for example the “Nabucco” gas pipeline that is supposed to start operating from the Caspian Sea through Turkey and the Balkans by 2011.60 The reconstruction of the Balkans is exclusively in the hands of Western corporations. All governments, whether left, right, liberal or green, accept this. There is no analysis of the connection between the politics of neoliberalism, its history, its background and its effects on Europe and other parts of the world. Likewise, there is no analysis of its connection to the new militarism. Plan/Solvency Since, in a just world, outer space would be treated as a global commons, and a global commons model precludes appropriation by private entities, then the appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust. Thus, the plan: States ought to adopt a binding international agreement that establishes outer space as a global commons not subject to appropriation and is enforced via a system of regulatory delimiting and global liability. The aff: - solves debris and space colonialism by ensuring the sustainable and equitable use of outer space resources. - prevents circumvention by aligning the interests of state parties - is normal means since it models numerous successful agreements governing all other global commons. Vollmer 20 Sarah Louise Vollmer (St. Mary's University School of Law), “The Right Stuff in Geospace: Using Mutual Coercion to Avoid an Inevitable Prison for Humanity,” 51 ST. MARY'S L.J. 777 (2020). https://commons.stmarytx.edu/thestmaryslawjournal/vol51/iss3/6?utm_source=commons.stmarytx.edu2Fthestmaryslawjournal2Fvol512Fiss32F6andutm_medium=PDFandutm_campaign=PDFCoverPages CT IV. NECESSITY FOR REGULATION TO PRESERVE THE HERITAGE OF MANKIND—A PROPOSAL ¶ Conceptually, all persons hold an implied property right in the space commons.111 As such, spacefaring entities and developing nations possess an equitable right to access and use orbital resources.112 But the sui generis nature of geospace presents a paradox requiring a unique regime for the sustainable usage of its resources.113 The international community cannot realize the advantages of the common heritage principle under a property regime because any conceivable assignment would violate the non-appropriation clause or unjustly enrich a particular interest.114 This means that only regulatory solutions can protect the interests inherent in a commons protected for the common heritage of mankind. ¶ A. The Motivations for International Compliance¶ The crux of a workable treaty lies in the consent of the parties to the agreement.115 Thereafter, signatories internalize the agreement’s object and purpose into their domestic law, or in the case of international organizations, into an institutional framework.116 To implement a binding international instrument, we must therefore ask the question: Why do nations follow international law,117 and how can we use those behavioral realities to construct a workable framework to ensure geospace survives?118¶ At the dawn of civilized society, depending on a particular jurisdiction’s values, the laws of nature and morality compelled obedience and social order.119 When nation-states concluded international agreements, it represented the coalescence of the various values-based systems, the overlap of which formed a universal understanding of the law of mankind.120 “The fundamental conceptual boundary between municipal and international law . . . views international law largely in terms of contractual relations, therefore assigning to the ‘sovereign’ a central place in the construction of the two orders.”121 In other words, transnational cooperation operated through balancing the competing autonomy and values of the parties involved. Despite centuries of debate, values systems remain the principal motivating factor of compliance with international law.122 Effective regulatory regimes must, therefore, strike at the heart of what nation-states value the most, which is often related to national security.123¶ When entering an international agreement, whether or not a nation-state will ratify it informs us of the value a nation-state places on the instrument’s subject matter. That value equates to the utility a nation-state places on certain allowances or prohibitions.124 Incorporating these motivating factors with Hardin’s regulatory solution, any freedoms infringed upon must manifest a higher utility than currently realized. If COPUOS proposes a protocol for sustainable uses of space, the provisions must either have a negligible effect on the global community’s perceived utility of space access or substantially increase that utility. Assuming the propositioned regulatory scheme aligns with the values system of each nation-state, the probability of internalizing such regulations through domestic codification is high. ¶ To ascertain the interests of nation-states, we must look to the factors motivating current space utilization. Routine access to space undeniably aids our technological advancement. The ISS’s antigravity environment provides unique conditions to study medicine.125 Satellites provide real-time tracking of environmental conditions and transmit crucial information for disaster recovery planning.126 Space telescopes track objects with the potential to cause the extinction of life of Earth.127 Free from the veil of our hazy atmosphere, satellites can produce better imagery and ascertain the composition of potential resource deposits on celestial bodies.128 And simply receiving satellite imagery of our planet forces us to confront the realities of our fragile existence. These benefits signify the tangible realization of the OST’s object and purpose, which flow to all members of the global community.129 If we do not begin active decontamination and mitigation of space debris, the utility of geospace will cease to exist. Imagining our existence without these advances is a potent method to stress the criticality of unabated pollution in geospace.¶ B. Existing Proposals¶ Legal scholars have formulated several frameworks to mitigate space debris. Some recommend implementing a market-share liability regime, which assigns liability according to the volume of each nation-states’ exploits.130 Opponents of this construction rightfully highlight the inequities inherent in such a scheme. Considering the United States, Russia, and China make up the bulk of spacefaring activity, market-share liability would unduly burden these nations, and coerce a categorical exit from the space industry or a repeat of the Moon Treaty.131 Another scholar advocates for an environmental law approach, asserting that the space commons would benefit from a protocol closely mirroring the Madrid Protocol.132 While prospective applications of such a model could prevent additional accumulations, it would not feasibly abate the current collection of debris.133 The strengths of Mary Button’s mitigation proposal lie in the binding nature of the Madrid Protocol and compulsory environmental impact requirements. And though it advocates for a more collaborative conference mechanism, rather than the strict unanimous consent required of UNCOPUOS’s resolutions, it still shies away from compulsory requirements for active debris removal. Along with the Antarctic Treaty (ATS), the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) also served as a model for the Corpus Juris Spatialis. But oddly, the law of salvage was omitted from the treaties. Unlike abandoned objects at sea, once a nation-state places an object into space, ownership exists in perpetuity. Sandra Drago addressed removing the OST’s property-in-perpetuity mechanism134 so as to permit the active salvage of inoperable satellites.135 Drago’s proposal is vital to any mitigation framework. But while this removes a substantial bar currently restricting debris removal, it does not address free-riding, and spacefaring enterprises are free to choose more lucrative space activities other than salvage operations.136 ¶ C. A Coercive Proposal¶ Mutual coercion lies at the core of Hardin’s solution.137 To summarize, law-abiding citizens make concessions to regulatory social constructs in the interest of conserving some utility otherwise lost.138 The coercive element lies in relinquishing one’s ability to exploit some freedom, the detriment of which cannot be realized at that moment in time.139 Conceding to a regime that tempers free exploitation of the commons allows everyone to benefit from the positive externalities of individual usage. Equated to space, nation-states currently concede to non-appropriation in the interest of maintaining equitable access. But because of the sui generis nature of geospace, even non-participants receive a benefit from the use of the commons. In effect, beneficiaries are free-riding from the capital investment of spacefaring nations and entities. This informs the structure of the ensuing two-part framework: geospace delimitation and global liability ¶ 1. Geospace Delimitation ¶ The history of regulatory delimitation illustrates its effectiveness at balancing the rights of individuals, sovereigns, and mankind. Each instance explained in Part II infra, arose out of public necessity to ensure and protect the maximum utility of the global commons, without the deleteriousness of inhabitability, sovereign interference, or over-exploitation.140 The regimes governing Antarctica, the High Seas, the Atmosphere, and the radio-frequency spectrum evidence that mutually coercive delimitation can honor the common heritage of mankind, without encroaching on the peaceful enjoyment and benefits attributable to these areas. ¶ a. Antarctica ¶ In the 1950s, there was concern that Antarctica would succumb to Cold War hysteria, becoming a target for international discord and nuclear arms testing.141 In a move to reestablish global scientific exchange, the international scientific community hosted the International Geophysical Year project, and after identifying the potential of Antarctica, sought to protect it from any ruinous power posturing.142 This necessity for regulating permissible activity resulted in the formation of the ATS.143 Subsequent technological advancement revealed mineral deposits, triggering commercial interest in exploiting its natural resources. The threat catalyzed the promulgation of the Madrid Protocol.144 Again, these delimitations did not sever humanity’s utility in Antarctica. Rather, mankind conceded to the prohibition of deleterious usage in the interest of preserving its scientific utility.145¶ b. The High Seas¶ Similar to Antarctica, the High Seas faced threats in the 1960s when nation-states began unilaterally and arbitrarily, extending resource recovery activities further into the depths of international waters.146 In the interest of equity, particularly the interests of landlocked nations, UNCLOS delimited sovereign access to the seas, allowing usage only within the established exclusive economic zones (EEZs).147 An annex to UNCLOS provided a procedural framework in which resource recovery enterprises could operate in international common areas beyond the EEZs, precluding the unilateral capture of global resources by one nation.148 Once more, a mutually coercive framework removed certain freedoms in the interest of mankind without unjustly limiting equitable access to resources. ¶ c. The Atmosphere¶ Divergent from the problems of the ice and sea, atmospheric regulation resolved an issue more analogous to geospace debris proliferation. Atmospheric utility is quite simple: breathable air and protection from deadly cosmic radiation. When satellite imagery revealed the sizable hole in the ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention placed an outright ban on ozone-depleting chemicals in everyday consumables.149 This prohibition directly addressed the source of the negative externality, forcing humanity to internalize the externality through alternate investment in refrigerants. Recent evidence of the reduction of ozone loss validates the mutually coercive delimitation within the Montreal Protocol.150¶ d. Regulating the Telecommunication Spectrum¶ The business model and financial strategy of telecommunications entities influence satellite deployment planning. Typically, orbital placement aims to “maximize a potential user base,” and if that base happens to encompass, for instance, the continental United States, market competition drastically narrows the availability of slots for satellite positioning.151 Realizing that satellite acquisition becomes moot without conscientious “use of telemetry and control . . . required for spaceflight,”152 the Space Radiocommunication Conference convened to revise the Radio Regulations in 1963,153 granting the ITU authority to allocate radio frequencies among spacefaring entities.154 Originally, the ITU:¶ Allocated orbits and frequencies solely through a first-in-time system. This led to concern that developed countries would secure all of the available slots before developing countries had the technological capacity to use them. Although some orbits and frequencies are still allocated on a first-in-time basis, each state is now guaranteed a certain number of future orbits and frequencies, regardless of its current technological capacity.155¶ The FCC regulates the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum allocated to the United States.156 Arguably, the ITU and agencies like the FCC engage in de facto appropriation of the more highly sought-after orbits.157 Yet to an extent, the ITU’s delimiting of the radio-frequency spectrum remedied the negative externalities of non-appropriation in geospace, such as the overcrowding of active satellites and the resultant interference. Where the ITU’s scheme does not remedy the byproduct of geospace resource use, it succeeds in ensuring communication capabilities remain free from inequitable use.158¶ e. The OST’s Ineffective Delimitations¶ The recurrent theme among the aforementioned regulatory schemes is the preservation of utility within the commons concerned.159 The frameworks each provide a means to enjoy shared resources while removing the potential for destruction. The OST’s nonproliferation provisions properly regulate the usage of the space commons to further the enjoyment of space’s true utility: scientific discovery and telecommunications. Likewise, the Liability Convention reinforces the necessity to maintain heightened situational awareness to guarantee the mutual, uninterrupted enjoyment of activity in space.160 But nation-states exploit the loop-holes within these documents to avoid internalizing some of their externalities. Specifically, the Liability Convention only assigns liability for damage caused to space objects when fault can actually be determined.161 Though it would be simple to assign fault to a collision caused by an intact and inoperative satellite, it is virtually impossible to identify the owner of smaller pieces of debris. Further, while the ITU reserves slots for nations not represented in space,162 it does nothing to stop those capable of reaching geospace from littering the commons and destroying the utility of reserved slots.163 Holistically, none of the delimitations in the Corpus Juris Spatialis negate the cause of the growing belt of debris in geospace.¶ As a sui generis resource, the mere occupation of LEO or GSO equates to the reduction of the overall utility of geospace. When an entity launches a rocket into space, the accompanying payload causes either (1) temporary reduction of the aggregate utility of geospace or (2) permanent reduction of the aggregate utility of geospace.164¶ The first delimitation prong will recommend bifurcating the applicability of the Corpus Juris Spatialis, with separate regimes for outer space and geospace. While the commercialization of outer space is not overly injurious to the international commons or interests of developing nations, the overcrowding of affluent spacefaring entities vying for orbital acquisition puts immense pressure on the finite resources within geospace. Therefore, demarcating the upper limit of geospace will allow entities to continue exploring the universe without imposing the restrictions placed on those seeking geospace positioning.165 This modification will allow continued use of both regions, but coerce more sustainable usage of geospace with the assistance of the secondary prong below. ¶ 2. Global Liability ¶ Operating under the theory that humanity holds an implied property right in the global commons but limited under the non-appropriation clause to protect those interests through traditional property mechanisms, the logical alternative is to impose liability on actions violative of the global interest.166 Further, assuming humanity collectively benefits from utilization of this commons, then humanity likewise must internalize the cost of the negative externalities imposed.167 This means that spacefarers, as members of the global collective, hold both the right and obligation to protect that right for others.168 Therefore, anyone utilizing or benefitting from the utilization of the geospace commons has an equitable duty to ensure its sustainability. Under traditional tort theories, when one has a duty, breach of that duty causally linked to a measurable injury is actionable. In terms of the duty to humanity when utilizing geospace, the culmination of Kessler Syndrome represents the measurable injury.¶ Kessler informed the scientific community in 1970 of the probable cataclysmic chain-reaction and destructive conclusion of unabated geospace debris pollution.169 This theory, reiterated consistently since its dissemination, materialized in 2009.170 Fundamentally, every spacefaring entity and approving launching state knows of this monumental threat to the utility of geospace. Yet to date, mitigation guidelines remain non-binding, and four-figure satellite constellations continue to receive approval.171 To incorporate a time-honored risk calculation method, the Hand Formula is instructive and evidences a trend toward unapologetic endangerment to the utility of geospace in isolation of the associated tort regime.¶ Let us assume the burden to mitigate space debris is $18.5 million172 but the probable magnitude of not mitigating the accumulation of space debris equates to reverting our technological capabilities back to the 1800s. Considering the accumulation of debris from the accidental or intentional breakup of geospace satellites, the probability of Kessler Syndrome fully concluding in the absence of a comprehensive mitigation protocol is one hundred percent.173 While difficult to quantify, the value of our scientific progress attributable to the advent of space travel far outstrips the burden to mitigate space debris. Should Kessler Syndrome become our reality, the measurable injury is the cost of reestablishing global communications without the usage of satellite relays. To add insult to injury, the invaluable utility of geospace will cease to exist.¶ A viable alternative would institute a regime of shared global liability which makes consideration of capital investors as well as nonparticipating beneficiaries in the interest of equity. That is, should the inevitable prison for humanity become a reality, the entire global community will be liable to pay an equitable share of the overall cost of recovery efforts.174 The Liability Convention should undergo a similar trifurcation, adding this new scheme to the current strict and absolute liability mechanisms.175 As such, shared global liability will consider the responsibility of nation-states and private entities in isolation.176 This will coerce cooperation among all agencies, nations, and private entities because the equitable share of responsibility will drive collective resolution. ¶ V. CONCLUSION¶ In light of the emerging global sentiments regarding environmental conservation and sustainability, instituting a regime that clearly defines a legal consequence in the event of environmental ruin boasts greater coercive force than non-binding resolutions. 9 This international agreement aligns with the universal value that the international community places on the utility of geospace.177 In essence, it protects geospace by forcing the signatory to face the reality of their negative externalities. It is unlikely that a nation-state exists that does not value space exploration and the benefits attributable.¶ In April of 2019, in the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), COPUOS adopted an agenda that focused on the long-term sustainability of the space commons, space traffic management, equitable uses of GSO, and the mitigation of space debris.178 Mindful of space’s critical role in attaining many of the SDGs, the Committee put forth guidelines to facilitate capacity building without prejudice to any one nation-states’ economic capabilities. To be sure, the Guidelines for the Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities are an important step forward, but many delegates reiterated the importance of developing binding instruments, particularly in light of developments in “space resource exploitation, large constellations, and space debris remediation.”179 ¶ Looking forward, research continues to advance the availability of debris mitigation mechanisms, such as the European Space Agency’s newly-commissioned ClearSpace-1 satellite.180 Mission objectives increasingly include end-of-life procedures to place satellites in appropriate orbits to decrease clutter in areas where active satellites operate.181 In the context of private entities, Planetary Resources—originally positioned to become a principle player in the space mining industry—merged with Consensys Space and quickly launched TruSat, a crowd-sourced situational awareness forum that compiles the reports of private citizens to track objects in geospace.182 These developments instill confidence in the international community’s sentiments toward ameliorating this ever-approaching catastrophe. It is with great hope that this trend continues, and COPUOS promulgates binding regulations to ensure the sustainability of geospace for the common heritage of mankind. “But we can never do nothing. That which we have done for thousands of years is also action. It also produces evils.”183 Treating space as a commons solves orbital debris. Current non-binding agreements are not enough. Silverstein and Panda ‘3/9 - Benjamin Silverstein research analyst for the Space Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MA, International Relations, Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs BA, International Affairs, George Washington University and Ankit Panda Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. AB, Princeton University, “Space Is a Great Commons. It’s Time to Treat It as Such.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Web). March 9, 2021. Accessed Dec. 13, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/09/space-is-great-commons.-it-s-time-to-treat-it-as-such-pub-84018 AT The failure to manage Earth orbits as a commons undermines safety and predictability, exposing space operators to growing risks such as collisions with other satellites and debris. The long-standing debris problem has been building for decades and demands an international solution.¶ Competing states need to coalesce behind a commons-based understanding of Earth orbits to set the table for a governance system to organize space traffic and address rampant debris. New leadership in the United States can spur progress on space governance by affirming that Earth orbits are a great commons. So far, President Joe Biden and his administration have focused on major space projects, but a relatively simple policy declaration that frames Earth orbits as a great commons can support efforts to negotiate space governance models for issues like debris mitigation and remediation. The Biden administration can set the stage to pursue broad space policy goals by establishing a consensus among states, particularly those with the most invested in Earth orbits, that space is a great commons.¶ THE PRESSING NEED FOR SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ The Earth orbits that provide the majority of benefits to states and commercial ventures represent only a tiny fraction of outer space as a whole. Competition for the limited volume of these Earth orbits is especially fierce since two satellites cannot be in the same place at the same time and not all orbits are equally useful for all missions. The number of objects residing in Earth orbits is now at an all-time high, with most new objects introduced into orbits at altitudes of between 400 and 700 kilometers above sea level. Millions of pieces of debris in Earth orbits pose a threat to continuing space operations. For instance, the final U.S. space shuttle missions faced 1-in-300 odds of losing a space vehicle or crew member to orbital debris or micrometeoroid impacts.¶ Collisions with fragments of orbital litter as small as a few millimeters across can ruin satellites and end missions. Current technologies cannot track all of these tiny pieces of debris, leaving space assets at the mercy of undetectable, untraceable, and unpredictable pieces of space junk. Some researchers have determined that the debris population in low Earth orbit is already self-sustaining, meaning that collisions between space objects will produce debris more rapidly than natural forces, like atmospheric drag, can remove it from orbit.¶ States—namely the United States, Russia, China, and India—have exacerbated this debris accumulation trend by testing kinetic anti-satellite capabilities or otherwise purposefully fragmenting their satellites in orbit. These states, along with the rest of the multilateral disarmament community, are currently at an impasse on establishing future space governance mechanisms that can address the debris issue. A portion of this impasse may be attributable to disparate views of the nature of outer space in the international context. Establishing a clear view among negotiating parties that Earth orbits should be treated as a great commons would establish a basis for future agreements that reduce debris-related risks.¶ Beyond debris-generating, kinetic anti-satellite weapons tests, revolutionary operating concepts challenge existing space traffic management practices. For instance, commercial ventures are planning networks of thousands of satellites to provide low-latency connectivity on Earth and deploying them by the dozens. States are following this trend. Some are considering transitioning away from using single (or few) exquisite assets in higher orbits and toward using many satellites in low Earth orbits. These new operational concepts could lead to an increase in collision risks.¶ Without new governance agreements, problems related to debris, heavy orbital traffic, and harmful interference will only intensify. Debris in higher orbits can persist for a century or more. The costs of adapting to increasingly polluted orbits would be immense, and the opportunity costs would be even higher. For instance, all else being equal, hardening satellites against collisions increases their mass and volume, in turn raising launch costs per satellite. These costs, rooted in a failure to govern space as a commons, will be borne by all space actors, including emerging states and commercial entities.¶ EXISTING FORMS OF SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ A well-designed governance system, founded on a widespread understanding of Earth orbits as a great commons, could temper these risks. Currently, space is not wholly unregulated, but existing regulations are limited both in scope and implementation. Many operators pledge to follow national regulations and international guidelines, but decentralized accountability mechanisms limit enforcement. These guidelines also do not cover the full range of potentially risky behaviors in space. For example, while some space operators can maneuver satellites to avoid collisions, there are no compulsory rules or standards on who has the right of way.¶ At the interstate level, seminal multilateral agreements provide some more narrow guidance on what is and is not acceptable in space. Most famously, the Outer Space Treaty affirms that outer space “shall be free for exploration and use by all states without discrimination of any kind” and that “there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.” Similar concepts of Earth orbits being a great commons arise in subsequent international texts. Agreements like the Liability Convention impose fault-based liability for debris-related collisions in space, but it is difficult to prove fault in this regime in part because satellite owners and operators have yet to codify a standard of care in space, and thus the regime does not clearly disincentivize debris creation in orbit. Other rules of behavior in Earth orbits have been more successful in reducing harmful interference between satellite operations, but even these efforts are limited in scope.¶ States have acceded to supranational regulations of the most limited (and thus most valuable) Earth orbits. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) coordinates, but does not authorize, satellite deployments and operations in geosynchronous orbits and manages radiofrequency spectrum assignments in other regions of space to reduce interference between satellites. These coordination activities are underpinned by the ITU’s constitution, which reminds states “that radio frequencies and any associate orbits . . . are limited natural resources,” indicating a commons-based approach to governing the radiofrequency spectrum. However, the union’s processes are still adapting to new operational realities in low Earth orbit, and these rules were never designed to address issues like debris. Current law governing space bans state appropriation, BUT ALLOWS private appropriation. A true global commons regime would require a form of democratic governance that ensures the equitable use of space resources and overcomes the expansion of neoliberal capitalism into outer space. Dardot 18 Pierre Dardot, “What democracy for the global commons?,” The Commons and a New Global Governance, ed. Samuel Cogolati and Jan Wouters (2018). https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/58613276/What_Democracy_-_Dardot_Leuwen_2018.pdf?1552469271=andresponse-content-disposition=inline3B+filename3DWhat_democracy_for_the_global_commons.pdfandExpires=1642726034andSignature=YJi8AG6~Y~-~~-~-mP0qsop4i3t~Z5bVLtQYwuDtUdXm6sdKaYwCJFFzQOL-OiY9nIH~JZsophnChwMlUMSGOCDVh7NhHmUonD28k9fU9PrfN2nYTNV2x8XnvoK2KtelSRvRyWN78eA7uC1isTAf1pO5~abPS9XQnORhjp9nPXjpIuBqLrrJhIUCKNjEorJ0u1h63DxkORBKVZfFh-TawG~PS~WdamGNqfljxjaP1G5bG-hUh1aNw0CuXhnqdd8yeH0-uT7iXVNu8cDl2zOtobIiAmD0SBKxjUXP8SYLkvNO0BETnpIzetK7gW8yksHtYjt-WasarhkMQpHeNwvJOY8QeA__andKey-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA CT
Using ‘commons’ as a noun, thus, implies a methodological break with this reification of common things, as well as with the logic underlying the classification of goods in economic theory. A ‘commons’ is first and foremost an institutional affair and, more specifically, an institutional space defined by collectively developed practical rules. What is most important is the dimension of instituting the activity, and not the technical characteristics of things and goods. Here lies the essential difference between common goods and the common(s). We must specify, therefore, that any commons, insofar as it is instituted as such, is a good in an ethical and political sense. By contrast, any good that is capable of being purchased and sold, is not in itself a commons. This means that a commons is a good only under the condition that it is not a possession or an acquisition. In other words, once it is instituted, a commons is inalienable and inappropriable. It creates a space within which use prevails over ownership. It is, thus, not a resource in itself – even when it is related to one. In this way we understand a commons to be the active link between an object, a place, a natural resource (for example, a waterfall or a forest), or something artificial (for example, a theatre or a square) and the collective activity of those who take charge of it, preserve it, maintain it and take care of it. This activity is not external to the commons, but instead inherent in it. If we take this to be the definition of every common, then a third implication is that a common, regardless of its specific designation, requires self-government or democratic government. The very act of establishing a common is in and of itself a democratic act. The act of governing a common is nothing more than the continuation of the democratic act; it is thus a sort of continuation of the institution. It consists of reviving this institution by critically assessing its collective rules, whenever the situation demands it. As such, the governance of the common can only proceed from the principle of democracy – the non-democratic governance of a common would threaten, in the short-term, the very existence of this common. I call this the principle of the common, this time in the singular form. For that purpose, I refer to the Latin etymology of this word: the common, or ‘cum-munus’, is the co-obligation that results from co-participation in the same activity. This co-obligation cannot proceed from the simple fact of belonging. Democracy is, in essence, co-participation in public affairs. The Occupy movement (for example, the anti-austerity movement in Spain, also referred to as the 15-M Movement or the Indignados, or the wave of protests in 2013 to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul’s Gezi Park) brought with it a strong anti-oligarchic critique of contemporary political representation, advocating for ‘real democracy’. Most notable is that this democratic requirement is strongly tied to ecological claims based on preserving the ‘commons’ (urban spaces in particular) against any sort of private or state enclosure. It then becomes evident that the commons (in the plural) cannot but be established or governed but by the implementation of the principle of the common (in the singular), which is to say, democracy. To sum up, common use requires self-government. Yet these examples would seem to speak in favour of the establishment of a local democracy, confined within specific geographic limits (for example, a neighbourhood or a city). Aristotle argued for a similar sort of constraint, pointing that beyond a certain number, citizens could no longer know each other. This capacity to mutually engage with one another was, according to him, an important condition for the exercise of democracy. Thus emerges a challenge I will here try to tackle: what sort of democracy is required for commons which are not local, but global in nature – global commons? My thesis is that this democracy can only be global. It remains to be seen what this sort of global democracy should look like. CURRENT PARADIGMS TO DEAL WITH THE UNLIMITED COSMOCAPITALISM With neoliberal capitalism we have come to know a singular historical phenomenon, which I will refer to as ‘cosmocapitalism’. How can this be understood? Cosmocapitalism is not merely a geographical or spatial extension of capitalism, since this extension appeared along with the birth of capitalism. It represents capitalism’s tendency to become universal. By this, I mean that capital tends to submit all aspects of human existence, even those most intimate and subjective, along with the natural world, to the market’s logic, which is nothing more than the logic of competition. The terms ‘world’ and ‘cosmos’ do not describe the planet in a physical sense, or even the global population, but rather the political framework, with its institutional and normative qualities whereby the expansion of the market’s logic becomes possible. Max Weber already described the idea of an immense cosmos which imposes its economic activity on the individual caught within the market’s grasp (Weber, 2002). Today, this cosmos has grown beyond the single economic sphere to include the social sphere. 3.1 Humanity’s Common Heritage Paradigm and the Appropriation of Space A first example will allow us to highlight this logic of limitlessness by examining the delegation of tasks between the state and private enterprises. On 25 November 2015, just a few days before the opening of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris, Barack Obama passed law H.R.2262, which provided authorization for private American companies to use natural resources from outer space (US Congress, 2015). As we know, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty established the legal status of outer space in the following manner (United Nations, 1967). Article 1 acknowledged that the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, implying free and equal access without discrimination of any kind. Article 2 established that ‘Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means’. These two conditions, equal access for all and non-ownership, are strictly complementary and both refer to subjects recognized by international law, that is to say, the states: ‘national appropriation’ is state ownership and non-appropriation refers to non-appropriation by states only. It is precisely from this ambiguity that the law (US Congress, 2015) was cleverly enacted on 25 November 2015. Its name is already quite self-evident: US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. In a nutshell, the Act gives any United States (US) citizen involved in commercial exploration and exploitation of an asteroid or space resource, the right to own, possess, transport, use, and sell this resource provided it is in accordance with the applicable legislation. This amounts to giving American companies a property right over space resources in due form (Calimaq, 2015). Yet, the law passed by Congress seems to pretend the contrary, as it provides a so-called ‘Disclaimer of Extraterritorial Sovereignty’ in Section 3 of the Act (US Congress, 2015) By the enactment of this Act, the United States– Exercises its jurisdiction over United States citizens and vessels, and foreign persons and vessels otherwise subject to its jurisdiction, in the exercise of the high seas freedom to engage in exploration for, and commercial recovery of, hard mineral resources of the deep seabed in accordance with generally accepted principles of international law recognized by the United States; but Does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any areas or resources in the deep seabed. We can clearly see how this law circumvents the prohibition of national appropriation articulated by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty: the prohibition forbids states themselves from ‘national appropriation by claim of sovereignty’, but it does not prevent a private company from exploring or exploiting space resources for commercial purposes. It goes without saying that the enactment of this law was very much applauded by private companies planning to embark on asteroid mining. What is remarkable about this law is that it confirms the international commitment of the US not to assert sovereignty over any space resource, while simultaneously conferring private companies the right to appropriate resources therein without any restriction. Under the Outer Space Treaty, the legal status of the ‘common things’ (res communes), under which certain resources are known to be common by nature (as in Roman law), is not formally addressed. Under Article I of the Outer Space Treaty, the outer space is not even declared to be the ‘common heritage of mankind’, but simply the ‘province of all mankind’ (United Nations, 1967). The notion of ‘common heritage’ was only explicitly introduced in 1967 to deal with the legal status of the deep seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (United Nations General Assembly, 1967). Regardless of the ambiguity of this notion, particularly regarding the holder of such heritage, the idea of ‘heritage’ implies a double duty to both preserve and transmit it. However, international law limits the right of use for states only, as they alone are faced with the prohibition of appropriation. We are, therefore, presented with a way of extrapolating the res communes category inherited from Roman law, insofar as non-appropriation and common use are present, but subordinate to the goodwill of the states. Thus, we are faced with a cheap if not unfinished version of a ‘common’, which is entrusted to states, and limits state sovereignty without even calling it into question. With the Competitiveness Act (US Congress, 2015), we are faced with an act of state sovereignty that manages to circumvent the prohibition of appropriation by a sovereign state without formally violating it. This represents a sort of ‘delegation’ under which the state, on the one hand, grants its citizens a legal title that it denies to itself, on the other, it does so in order to better guarantee it to those to whom it has been delegated. The imperium (state sovereignty) gives full licence for all candidates to the dominium, to privately control and appropriate any resources they are able to seize: statutory law enforces beforehand the power that technology provides. Beyond this collusion between the state and private companies, what emerges here is the powerful homology between state and private ownership: imperium and dominium appear to be based on two forms of a similar logic of ownership, which affirm one another. The primary challenge facing the heritage of mankind paradigm is that it does not fundamentally break with interstate logic and, as such, leaves leeway for private appropriation. 3.2 The Global Public Goods Paradigm and the Value of Biodiversity A second example allows us to unveil the same neoliberal capitalist logic at work within the realm of the destruction of the biosphere. At the end of the 1980s, with the momentum of the pollution rights initiated by Reagan, George H. W. Bush encouraged the expansion of the market endorsing the ‘No Net Loss’ goal (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: p. 45). The seemingly small adjective ‘net’ carries with it a heavy connotation. It does not mean that we do not have the right to destroy biodiversity but rather, the opposite. Indeed, under the ‘No Net Loss’ principle, we have the right to destroy biodiversity as long as we replace whatever has been destroyed elsewhere. In other words, damages resulting from human activities must be balanced by at least equivalent gains. For example, we have the right to destroy ten acres of forest in one area, as long as we plant ten acres of trees elsewhere, within the next 30 years, because once the new trees have grown, it will not make any difference. In market lingo, this is referred to as ‘biodiversity offsetting’. The neoliberal argument is the same and is now well-established – we have failed to obtain our reduction goals, so we must adapt our strategy by trying new financial mechanisms, which are much more effective than the inefficient laws and regulations. That these so-called ‘laws and regulations’ have failed because they have bet on the market must be hidden. It is always the same explanation – if we failed, it is not because we conceded to the market, but rather the opposite, because we did not sufficiently take advantage of it. What is the relationship between this logic of compensation and actual biodiversity, which is made up of the interaction between complex systems, and not of detachable and interchangeable parts? A good example comes from the Brazilian company Vale, which sought to present eucalyptus plantations as a form of reforestation of the Amazon rainforest whose destruction it has actively contributed to. The logic of this compensation can be understood as equivalency logic in its most literal sense. That is, it assumes that there is a commensurability between the Amazon rainforest and eucalyptus plantations, which would affirm their equal value. This type of reasoning is completely indifferent to the sort of relationship a tree has with the soil: the fact that the eucalyptus, which originated from Australia, actually dries up the Amazonian soil, is not at all taken into consideration (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: pp. 94–5). As Marx so aptly described it in the first Volume of his major book Capital (1992), the logic behind market equivalency is at its core a logic of indifference to the qualitative differences that exist between different types of work, and the products that stem from each. What is remarkable here is that we are not referring to the products of human work but instead to living ecosystems. Here we have come to a critical point: the marketing of biodiversity requires that we assign value to something that is not, in fact, a product of work. This argument was reaffirmed by Pavel Sukhdev, a banker who has directed the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since 2007: ‘We take advantage of nature because it has value. But we lose it because it is free’ (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: p. 62). Thus, ‘the economy has become the currency of politics’ (sic), we have to learn to understand ‘the economic value of nature’ and express it in a way that is clear to political decision makers. In essence, we must remedy the ‘invisible economics of nature’ by assigning to it a monetary value or a price. In order to carry out this task we must employ a calculation: in this way, the pollination of trees and flowers by bees constitutes an economically invisible service whose value is estimated at 200 billion dollars, which is almost 8 per cent of the global agricultural production on earth according to Pavel Sukhdev (ibid.: p. 9). The same principle can be applied to pure air or drinking water – the services they render become more and more valuable as they become increasingly rare. Scarcity has always determined value, except that now scarcity represents the services provided by nature. But what exactly does the notion of an economically assessable ‘service’ mean? What vision of nature does it propose and is this conceptualization really new? For a long time, biodiversity was conceived of as a group of resources comprised of several distinct elements (genes, species, habitats and so on), which were capable of being owned, purchased and sold. This conception prevailed in Rio during the Convention on Biological Diversity (United Nations, 1992). But, at the end of the twentieth century, a more dynamic representation emerged which posited that ecosystems should be recognized as the ‘third level of biodiversity’, situated above genes and species (Feydel and Bonneuil, 2015: pp. 164–166). Now processes and flows take precedence over individual entities and elements. Although we can measure the intrinsic value of the latter, we can only appreciate the value of process and flow in terms of ‘services’. It is, thus, not biodiversity in and of itself which is valuable, but more so the services rendered by the ecosystems that possess value. Hence the notion of ‘ecosystem services’, consisting of streams of natural capital stock which, when combined with human industrial activities, gives way to human welfare (ibid.: pp. 59 and 165). ‘Provisioning services’ (related to ‘resources’: food, wood, grains and so on), ‘regulating services’ (the climate, rainfall, water quality), and ‘cultural services’ (spiritual or recreational value of nature) can be counted among such services. Biobanks sell shares to protect species threatened by deforestation to the very companies who carry out such acts (ibid.: p. 154). Many are unwavering in their belief that the biosphere as a whole should be treated as natural capital. In keeping with this line of thought, the following shift occurs: the biosphere should not enter the commercial sphere merely as a commodity (the logic underlying the sale of timber and industrial capitalism, marketing ‘biological resources’ and patented genes, and so on), but also and most importantly as an asset (that is, within the context of securities eligible for future revenue based on the logic of annuities) (ibid.: p. 166). Thus, we move from the simple commodification of nature, typical of industrial capitalism, which emphasizes producing goods, to neoliberal capitalist financialization and, simultaneously, from the portrayal of nature as a ‘resource’ to its representation as capital generating a ‘flow of services’. How does the theory of GPGs (Kaul et al., 1999) allow us to fight against this trend to financialization? Is GPGs theory not designed, on the contrary, to promote governance of private and state actors? As we know, beyond the criteria relative to the beneficiaries of such goods (the publicum which turns these goods into global goods), this theory distinguishes between three classes of GPGs: global natural goods (for example, ozone layer, climate stability); (ii) goods that constitute man-made heritage (for example, knowledge, cultural heritage, the Internet); and (iii) goods that result from global politics (for example, peace, health, financial stability). While the first class represents natural goods, the other two result from human activity. However, the distinction between these three distinct classes becomes blurred in the case of the negative consequences flowing from poorly managed non-renewable energy. As a result of global policies, global natural goods slide into the third category of GPGs. Moreover, an economistic approach in terms of supply requires that these natural goods are reduced to ‘stock variables’ like the goods of the second category, whereas the goods of the third category are conceived as ‘flow variables’ since a continued effort is required to ensure their potential. But if natural assets are now part of the third category, should we conclude that they have become ‘flow variables’? In any case, the evolution from ‘stock’ to ‘flow’ corresponds precisely with the sort of change that accompanies and legitimizes nature’s financialization. Finally, and most worryingly, the value attributed to biological diversity is estimated by reference to the costs of protecting it. Thus, biological diversity enters the category of public goods that have an ‘intrinsic existence value’ ‘in an effort to grapple with and ultimately define the intrinsic worth of protecting the good’ (ibid.: p. 253). We would be better off articulating that this is not intrinsic at all: biodiversity has no value of its own and is not a good in and of itself; instead, its value is derived from the fact that it is the result of subjective appreciation, which amounts to recognizing that this is a good. We see what can result from the ambiguity surrounding the term ‘good’. But overall this confirms the rejection of the notion of biodiversity’s intrinsic value in favour of the idea that value is assigned by an external party, which expresses in its own way the notion of ‘ecosystem services’. 4. COSMODEMOCRACY Given the logic underlying cosmocapitalism, we must find out a new type of global democracy if we wish to have any chance of halting and reversing it. Such a democracy will be referred to below as cosmodemocracy. It is indeed linked to cosmopolitanism; that is, to the idea of global politics and global citizenship. 4.1 Different Types of Cosmopolitanism 4.1.1 Cosmopolitanism as a project Cosmopolitanism can be defined as the feeling and consciousness of belonging to the same world. It can be expressed in many different ways. It can represent the awareness of living in the same world or sharing the same human condition, the feeling of sharing a common, confined space, and the feeling of being affected by everything that affects another part of humanity. According to Kant’s well-known dictum, ‘a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world’ (Kant, 1977). The awareness of belonging to a shared world has been expressed in noteworthy works of philosophy. This is particularly true of stoicism, within which man is seen as belonging to part of a ‘Universal’ or ‘Upper City’ and whose political city is just a small image. Individuals are then viewed as a citizens of the world, but this citizenship is not at all political. By virtue of its universalism, Christianity was able to modify and extend its tradition through the ‘catholicity’ of the Church. The idea that human rights are not limited to any specific country, but are universal in nature, arose from Christian universalism and found support from various scholars and lawyers, including Anacharsis Cloots, author of Bases constitutionnelles de la République du genre humain (1793). Yet the framework remains one in which the world is assimilated to the nation: the human race becomes the only ruler so that the Universal Republic must identify with the Republic of Mankind and there is only one nation that corresponds with humanity itself. With Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay (1795), cosmopolitanism begins to take a new meaning. Kant distinguishes between three overlapping components of public law: municipal or civil law (ius civitatis), which should be a republican constitution; (ii) international law or the law of nations (ius gentium), which provides for the right of states to engage in mutual relations or international law via a federation of free states; and (iii) cosmopolitan law (ius cosmopoliticum). However, cosmopolitan law is intended to guarantee the right of ‘hospitality’ to all individuals – which is a right of access merely to promote trade. In this way, cosmopolitanism restricts the cosmos to the commercial sphere without establishing a genuine political citizenship. 4.1.2 Factual cosmopolitanization What was once only an idea or ideal has become part of how we now live. Cosmopolitanism has become the new reality, both in an objective and subjective sense, and what Ulrich Beck has called ‘banal cosmopolitanism’ (2006: p. 26). This factual cosmopolitanization, borne out of the growth of interdependence and transnationalization of ways of life and cultures, should not be confused with transnational political activities and institutional creations, even if the link between these phenomena seems quite obvious. Factual cosmopolitanization is essential to the world’s inhabitants, albeit to varying degrees. It became extremely important at the turn of the century. With the rise of global risks, it began to haunt our minds, penetrating the banality of everyday life, for example, with respect to food, altering our aesthetic tastes, and changing our approach to interstate relations by giving preference to human rights over sovereignty. It is no longer a matter of assigning positive value to the world’s political organization by imagining what the future might hold. It is rather about establishing and characterizing the multitude of processes that transform everyday life up to the point where they lead to the relativization of national borders. According to Beck, ‘reality itself has become cosmopolitan’ (ibid.: p. 10). With globalization and resistance to the latter, a new era has emerged – that of ‘reflexive modernity’. In order to see, understand, and analyse it, one must abandon the ‘national perspective’ and ‘methodological nationalism’, 4.1.3 Normative and institutional cosmopolitanism What Beck also failed to see is that normative and institutional cosmopolitanism do not flow freely and naturally from factual cosmopolitanization. This is so, firstly, because of the opposition of forces that have no interest in seeing their powers being eroded. Second, and most importantly, because a strictly empirical conceptualization of factual cosmopolitanization runs the risk of overlooking immediately what is generated from internal relations of domination in national and local settings, and what is beyond local level democratic control. Now, because the local and national spheres are losing their ‘naturalness’, for those who live in those areas, the effects of globalization imply that the normative and institutional issues arise with urgency in a political form that is antagonistic. Factual cosmopolitanization is no longer a ‘happy globalization’, but for many the dispossession of their destiny. We must give credit to Karl Renner, Austrian Social Democrat and Austro-Marxist, for encouraging the reflection on the switch between a de facto internationalism to an institutionalized internationalism (Renner, 1998). This de facto internationalism, comprised of economic, social and cultural forms of internationalization, demonstrates how the world’s legal fabric extends beyond the mere sum of nations. In the same way that the nation is the product of a historical development which culminates in its legal capacity at the end of the eighteenth century, the ‘internation’, to use Mauss’ term, will inevitably find its legal form from a substrate of facts that is poorly or not at all seen, but as such, represents a legal duty. The term ‘international’ should not be taken at face value, as it represents much more than international relations between states. Indeed, it involves the way in which the world is constructed, legally and politically, in its post-Westphalian organization. According to Mauss, the enemy is state sovereignty, as it represents an obstacle to real human interests. We are moving towards a world order that will no longer be limited by the coexistence of sovereign nation states, what Renner calls the ‘institutional Oecumene’. The creation of the League of Nations in 1920 gave way to a new era, as the ‘community of nations’ was granted legal standing above the states. Renner claims that, as a result of the establishment of the League, a ‘supra-State international law’ appeared in order to guarantee an infra-state national law, which itself protects minorities. However, as Renner argues, this step remained constrained by the desire to freeze the acquired positions after the First World War. We know that this is also exactly what happened in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations: as demonstrated recently during the COP 21, the most glaring contradiction still exists between the interstate logic of a group of sovereign states, and the need for a global community which undermines the sovereignty of each state in order to respect higher principles which cater to the interests of humanity. Hence Renner’s proposal in 1937: delegates representing ‘partial international interests’ (capital, labour, culture and so on) should be members of the League of Nations Council. It is under this condition that international interests would be taken into account, since the representatives in question would not be able to mandate all issues nationally. The question, then, is how to make this global human community exist as such. We can envision this as Renner did when describing a global parliament or, more specifically, a second chamber of representatives in which the people themselves articulate and make decisions about their economic structure and social values, along with their present grievances and hopes for the future (Renner, 1998: p. 74). Yet it is evident that the creation of a supranational chamber does not respond to the needs of those who represent ‘partial international interests’. Indeed, the parliamentary system of representation, with all its inherent vices, is simply replicated on a global scale. In order to overcome the interstate’s limitations, we must decide to make the leap from internationalism and cosmopolitanism to cosmopolitics; that is, to a political organization of humanity 4.2 Cosmopolitics The two paradigms discussed above suffer from a crippling limitation – that of humanity’s common heritage which subjects the ‘common things’ to the interstate logic, and that of GPGs, which leave the latter to the governance of private and state actors. Still, progress has been made in the establishment of humankind law. But, even assuming a legal status was assigned to humanity, this would not suffice, and neither would a cosmopolitan consciousness, in reaching cosmopolitan institutions. How do we overcome the double impasse imposed by the interstate and global private law, while paving the way for humanity’s common form of political activity; which is to say, a real democracy for humanity? I would like to highlight two points which I feel are complementary. The first relates to the institutional architecture of a global democracy and the second concerns the political activity of world citizens. The first requires, above all, a political imagination, and the second assumes that we extend the observation of collective practices and experimentations already underway. 4.2.1 The dual federation of the commons In order to introduce the first point, we must return to our discussion of the commons. Early on in this chapter, we established that the commons are institutional matters to the extent that they determine the rules of common use. In this sense, the commons emerge from what we might legally refer to as the ‘public’, not only in the orthodox economics sense of the collective nature of ‘public goods’, but also in terms of the public in opposition to the private. It is important to note that this public sui generis is non-state public. What exactly does this mean? The state’s public aims to ensure universal access to services but it does so by allowing state administration to monopolize the management of these services, thereby excluding users reduced to mere consumer status. The non-state public of the commons guarantees universal access via user participation in this management. Note that non-state does not mean anti-state, but rather, autonomous from the state. But what are we to make of the state itself? Under what conditions can it itself become a common? And how can we conceptualize its articulation to what belongs to the infra- and supra-state levels? Moreover, how can the different types of commons be organized among themselves? The magnitude of these questions led us to imagine a political system, that of non-centred federalism, which was inspired by Proudhon (1863). Indeed, he designed a dual federation of social and economic organizations, representing the municipalities as well as the production units and working companies, both of which should be governed by the principle of democracy. In a similar way, we can distinguish, on the one hand, the social-economic commons (common of river, common of forest, seed bank, production unit and so on) independently constituted of territoriality and administrative borders and, on the other hand, political commons formed through the process of increasingly integrating territories (municipalities, regions, states, international groupings of states). Yet, in all of this we are neither statists nor anarchists. We are even reluctant to consider a single global government or a single world state, which would imply a centralized form of authority that is incompatible with the democracy required by the institution of the commons. We are supporters of a polyarchic system, which should not be understood as ‘government of the many’ but instead as ‘many governments’ democratically coordinated across the world, which naturally implies a systematic intersection of different types of government, state and non-state, politics, and socio-economics. 4.2.2 Global citizenship These ‘demo-cosmopolitan’ systems will not come from above and they will not emerge from interstate decisions or contractual agreements between private actors. Historically, the exercise of constructive activist citizenship has been an important precursor to the creation of new political institutions. Today, we observe the elements of an authentic political citizenship, which is diverse, decentred and transnational at the same time. This is exemplified by anti-globalization and social movements, in the missions of non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International, in the commitment of certain ecological associations to the COP 21, and via initiatives supporting public aid for migrants, and so on. This is not a citizenship that is expected to gain legal recognition, status, rights or duties as part of a state, but instead one that is called to act, engaging in transnational actions by those Beck calls ‘global public interest entrepreneurs’ (2006). We could also refer to them as global commons actors. This non-state and non-statutory citizenship must be thought of in terms of practices aimed at maintaining or acquiring rights rather than formally granting them. Only such transnational citizenship-in-action can give full meaning to the idea of cosmopolitics: politics for the world, as long as the ‘world’ implies what resonates in the Latin term mundus, namely, not the Earth as a planet and not the totality of individuals living on Earth but instead, the living connection between the individuals inhabiting in and the Earth itself. In this sense, the anti-globalization slogan ‘the world is not for sale’ is more meaningful than it might seem at first sight: the world, in itself, is not a ‘thing’ that we can own; it must be recognized as inappropriable and instituted as a common. 5. Conclusion To conclude, instituting the world as a common cannot be understood as an extension of the nation-state or city-state models at the global level. The democracy of the global commons is irreducible to a mere change of scale. Instead, it requires a genuine collective political invention, which is based on the multiplication of self-government at all levels. Development of space resources is still possible with a commons model. Property rights are not necessary. Existing models governing commons encourage responsible development, numerous examples prove. Sterling Saletta and Orrman-Rossiter 18 Sterling Saletta, Morgan; Orrman-Rossiter, Kevin (2018). Can space mining benefit all of humanity?: The resource fund and citizen's dividend model of Alaska, the ‘last frontier’. Space Policy, (), S0265964616300704–. doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2018.02.002 CT The Outer Space Treaty (OST) came into force in 1967 and, having been ratified by all the major space faring governments as well as some 100 other nations, the Outer Space Treaty serves as the basis for international space law, the current corpus juris spatialis. The treaty declares the exploration and use of outer space shall be for, “the benefit and in the interests of all countries 27” and that outer space, as mentioned previously, “shall be the province of all mankind 27”. With the increased commercialization of space, and the entrance of new actors, both national and private, the OST has come under increased scrutiny, with calls to expand, modify, and even to abrogate it 35,36. Issues surrounding the mining of celestial bodies have received particular attention and debate 37. Of particular concern is the matter of exploitation licences and property rights 38. The OST expressly forbids the “national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by other means” 27 of outer space and celestial bodies. This is frequently interpreted to mean that the OST denies private property claims in outer space, some authors and individuals 39–41 have argued that appropriation by non-nationalentities is allowed. The Outer Space Treaty, and its terrestrial analogues, UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) and the Antarctica Treaty System (ATS) are ‘global commons regimes', though the terminology governing these commons differs and juridical concepts such as “common heritage of humanity” found in UNCLOS (and the Moon Treaty of 1979) and the “common province of mankind” found in the Outer Space Treaty have been interpreted in various manners. Due in part to these varying wordings, interpretations and attendant uncertainties, the need for a more comprehensive framework governing the environmental, ethical, and commercial aspects of space exploration, exploitation and colonization has been highlighted by many authors 30,33,34. Some advocates for the commercial exploitation of space claim that the absence of property rights is a barrier to such ventures, and in particular to the mining of celestial bodies such as the Moon or near earth asteroids 35. Some have gone so far as to suggest an abrogation of the OST in favor of a treaty that allows something like fee-simple ownership and what might best be called a California gold rush approach to outer space resource exploitation 36–38. Advocates of this approach would give something like fee-simple ownership of outer space resources on a ‘first in time, first in right’ basis with no clear licensing regime for such activities 39. In recent US law, Title IV of H.R. 2262- the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, grants ownership of asteroid resources to entities obtaining them but attempts to walk a fine line between this approach and international treaty obligations. It does not grant ownership of asteroid themselves, and explicitly states that resource exploitation must be in accordance with federal laws and existing treaty obligations, i.e. the OST 40. How such eventual exploitation occurs, and under what precise national and international regulatory and licensing regimes, is thus still a matter for the future to decide. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that modifications and additions to the OST based on terrestrial models will provide sufficient guarantee of the right to make profits from the exploitation of outer space resources. Henry Hertzfeld and Frans von der Dunk argue the current regime does not pose a problem for exploitation rights and that terrestrial models would allow private ventures the right to reasonable returns on investment from resource exploitation in space 41. Furthermore, in addition to important, and possibly irreconcilable, differences between a California gold rush style approach and the OST 42, arguments suggesting fee-simple or similar ownership is necessary for profitable private outer space resource exploitation simply do not stand in the face of contrary evidence from numerous terrestrial examples. These include offshore oil drilling, mining, timber and grazing operations in the United States and internationally which are regularly and profitably undertaken without ownership 43. Thus P. M. Sterns and L. I. Tennen argue that the current international regime does provide an adequate framework for commercial development in space, that fee-simple ownership is unnecessary and: “those who advocate the renunciation and abandonment of the nonappropriation principle are either seeking to increase their own bottom line by disingenuous and deceptive constructs, or lack an appropriate appreciation and respect for international processes 44, p. 2439”. Thus, claims that a lack of private property rights in outer space will be a deterrent to commercial resource exploitation ventures in space do not reflect an adequate reflection and analysis of the manner in which current terrestrial practices might be extended into outer space without abrogating the current treaty regime. Nor would a system based on fee simple ownership be likely to tangibly benefit more than a small proportion of the world's population. Instead, the eventual wealth from exploiting celestial bodies would be concentrated in the hands of a few, exacerbating rather than alleviating existing problems for humanity and global sustainable development. The Outer Space Treaty has provided an effective legal framework for the exploration of outer space for over 50 years. Based on the history of treaty regimes governing other international spaces, UNCLOS and the ATS, it seems likely that, in future, additional protocols and agreements will be layered onto the OST and that calls to abrogate and to negotiate a wholly new treaty system are unlikely to succeed. While low participation in the Moon Agreement, also known as the Moon Treaty of 1979, which has not been ratified by either the United States, Russia, or China, has raised questions of legitimacy, it has recently been argued that the Moon Treaty may receive renewed interest in the international community. René Lefeber argues that, far from stifling commercial ventures, the Moon Agreement “provides the best available option for mankind, states and industry to develop space mineral resources in a harmonious way 5, p. 47”, and that, as resource exploitation in outer space now seems likely, the need to elaborate an international regime to prevent conflict over resources may bring other parties to ratify, accede to, or sign the treaty. Ultimately, some form of international governance of outer space as a global commons 45 building on the OST and the current corpus juris spatialis seems both more likely and more desirable than an abrogation of the OST and its replacement with an entirely new treaty regime. Thus, an international regime built upon this existing regime will need to be constructed which takes a balanced approach to space exploration, development and exploitation and which encourages entrepreneurial development but also moves beyond vague utopian platitudes to real and concrete benefits for all of humanity.
3/19/22
SO - Covid
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart SP | Judge: Clark-Villanueva, Leah I. Vaccine Apartheid A TRIPS waiver for covid vaccines will not pass in the squo. Baschuk 7/26 Bryce Baschuk Reporter, Bloomberg Economics, 21 - ("WTO Holiday From Vaccine Equity Talks Draws Calls for Action," Bloomberg, 7-26-2021, accessed 8-18-2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-26/wto-s-holiday-from-vaccine-equity-talks-draws-calls-for-action)//ML An urgent global effort to rebalance the inequity between rich, vaccinated nations and poor nations sliding further into pandemic misery is colliding with an immovable calendar conflict: the European summer holiday. Next week World Trade Organization delegates are planning to depart Geneva for their August break and, in doing so, pause their fractious debate over a proposal to waive intellectual-property protections for Covid-19 shots until the second week of September.¶ Before they leave, members will adopt a report that acknowledges they’ve made scant headway on the proposal aimed at making doses more widely available, which the world’s top health expert says is critical to ending a “moral failure.”¶ “With so many lives on the line, profits and patents must come second,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a virtual summit last week.¶ WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala previously urged ambassadors to shorten their usual six-week summer holiday to focus on pressing issues like the waiver. Nevertheless, members aren’t planning to reconsider the matter until the week of Sept. 6, according to officials familiar with the planning.¶ “August doesn’t matter in Geneva; it doesn’t matter if people are dying around the world,” said Shailly Gupta, a spokesperson at Médecins Sans Frontières. “We hope members will move at a faster pace.”¶ Disagreement persists on the fundamental question of whether a waiver is the “appropriate and most effective way” to address the shortage of vaccines, according to a draft status report produced by Dagfinn Sørli, the chairman of WTO council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS.¶ That split could sink prospects for an ambitious vaccine waiver because WTO decisions must be taken on the basis of consensus -- which means any of the 164 members can veto a final agreement for any reason.¶ ”The WTO’s response to Covid is the most critical issue before our organization right now,” WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said a phone interview. “Millions have died and lives are at stake. Finding a pragmatic outcome by December is essential.”¶ Proponents of the waiver had hoped to conclude their negotiations by the end of July and are now criticizing the European Union and other developed nations for sandbagging the talks.¶ EU ‘Not Interested’¶ The European Commission, which opposes a WTO TRIPS waiver, has proposed a series of measures that it argues will create greater legal certainty for nations to leverage existing trade tools in order to expand their production capacities.¶ “The EU is not interested,” Gupta said. “Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom are not engaging. They’re saying: ‘This or that won’t work; the waiver won’t work.’ There is no intention of engaging.”¶ A spokesman for the EU mission in Geneva declined to comment.§ Critics counter that the proposal from Brussels is a distraction to redirect focus from India and South Africa’s earlier waiver proposal and to prevent members from engaging in more detailed negotiations.¶ “The EU’s actions are incredibly cynical and dangerous,” said Lori Wallach, the founder of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “They have submitted a paper that basically conflicts with the text-based negotiations by saying ‘We don’t want a waiver.’”¶ The U.S., meanwhile, has taken a back seat in the process and enthusiasm about Washington’s engagement on the issue has begun to wane in the three months since Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced American support for a waiver.¶ Though Tai’s surprise announcement briefly knocked shares of Moderna Inc., Pfizer Inc., and BioNTech SE, the stocks quickly rebounded and all are now trading at or near their highest levels of the year.¶ “People feel that message from Ambassador Tai is not playing out on the ground or being implemented in a meaningful way,” said Thiru Balasubramaniam a managing director at Knowledge Ecology International in Europe. The only way to solve the pandemic is global vaccination, but current production is woefully short. Public Citizen 3/29 - Public Citizen “Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people – not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country. We don’t participate in partisan political activities or endorse any candidates for elected office. We take no government or corporate money, which enables us to remain fiercely independent and call out bad actors – no matter who they are or how much power and money they have.”, “Waiver of the WTO’s Intellectual Property Rules: Facts vs. Common Myths,” Public Citizen Global Trade Watch Series. March 29, 2021. Accessed Aug. 10, 2021. https://www.citizen.org/article/waiver-of-the-wtos-intellectual-property-rules-myths-vs-facts/ AT The COVID-19 public health disaster and resulting economic crises won’t end anywhere unless people everywhere are vaccinated. Despite this obvious truth, rich countries with only 14 of the global population have secured preferential access to over 50 of projected global vaccine supplies. Ongoing outbreaks anywhere allow the virus to mutate, threatening the whole world with vaccine-resistant variants or more deadly or easily spread variants. Governments invested billions to create the vaccines. But, there is a dire shortage, with no end in sight. As we enter the second quarter, about one billion doses have been produced in 2021. We need 10 to 12 billion to reach global herd immunity. And we will need far more if, like flu vaccines, they must be repeated or require booster shots. In every region, there are existing firms that could gear up production and governments willing to invest in expanding supply. But WTO rules require countries to guarantee pharmaceutical corporations monopoly control. More than 100 countries support a temporary, emergency suspension of these WTO rules, so more vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests can be manufactured in as many places as possible. The United States and a handful of other WTO members are blocking the waiver: They won’t even agree to negotiate about waiver language to address whatever concerns that they may have with the current text. Donald Trump started this self-defeating blockade. President Joe Biden must reverse it to speed the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Changing IP laws is key to combatting global health inequality and vaccine apartheid. Rich countries hoard vaccine supply, which means donor models never solve and reinforce colonialism. Harman et al 6/21 Sophie Harman professor of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London, Parsa Erfani Fogarty Global Health Fellow at the University of Global Health Equity and a medical student at Harvard Medical School, Tinashe Goronga Community Organiser Equal Health Global Campaign Against Racism at EqualHealth, Jason Hickel, Michelle Morse, Eugene T Richardson 6/21 - ("Global vaccine equity demands reparative justice — not charity," BMJ Global Health, 6/21/2021, https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/6/e006504)//ML By late April, more than 80 of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines had gone to people in wealthy countries, with just 0.3 to people in low-income countries.1 This reprehensible imbalance is no accident. High-income countries have used neocolonial negotiating power, global policy leverage and capital to procure enough doses to cover 245 of their citizens while leaving few doses for poorer countries.2 As a result, lower-income countries may not be able to vaccinate their populations until 2023.3¶ Such inequity is yet another example of how the interests of racial capitalism run roughshod over the golden rule of global solidarity—attend to the highest risk first.4 Currently, older and medically vulnerable individuals are dying from COVID-19 disproportionately in poor countries, while young, healthy individuals are getting vaccinated in wealthy ones.5 Vaccine apartheid is a not novel phenomenon. The notion that only certain corners of the world get to benefit from life-saving treatments is an everyday reality of a global health system driven by a capitalist, philanthropic model.6 7 But in times of crises—and as new variants threaten the vaccination plans of wealthy countries—these inequities and their solutions come to the forefront of global debate.8¶ Policy-makers in rich nations are aware of these issues. But the solutions they have proposed so far do nothing to address the underlying structural problems. They offer charitable donations and partial, temporary fixes that are designed to deflect the substantive demands for reform that global South countries are fighting for, including challenges to unethical intellectual property (IP) regimes.9 This approach will not work, because it is not designed to ‘work.’ If we want to end vaccine apartheid, we need to target the root causes of global health inequities. We need reparative justice.¶ Three limited ‘solutions’ to vaccine inequity¶ There are currently three approaches to reduce inequity in COVID-19 vaccine distribution: bilateral charity, multilateral charity and temporary waivers or suspensions of IP.¶ The first is the most straightforward. States that stockpile COVID-19 vaccines have committed to sharing their leftovers with low-income and middle-income countries. Norway was one of the first nations to accede to donating doses to poorer countries in parallel with its vaccine programme.10 This is the weakest form of equity as it is unclear if this will be done for free, at a lower cost, tied to diplomacy or conditionality, or crucially, when these vaccines will be made available, where they will go, or how many will be delivered. The bilateral charity approach has little to do with equity and more to do with geopolitics, wealth and aid dependency.11 12¶ The second is multilateral charity, best exemplified by COVAX. In 2020, COVAX emerged as an international collaboration by the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund, Gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to ensure equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines.13 Rich countries can access doses for 10–50 of their populations, depending on how much they have paid in, and poor countries can access doses for 20 through the scheme. It is the 20 for poor countries that has come to be COVAX’s unique selling point: here is a mechanism that ensures every country in the world can get the vaccine regardless of ability to pay. This is the first time such an initiative has been trialled.¶ The shortcomings of COVAX are numerous. If vaccines are delivered as planned, COVAX may reach 27 of the population in lower-income countries by the end of 2021—a depressing goal compared with the estimated 70 coverage needed for herd immunity and the open vaccine access currently granted to Americans.14 15 Furthermore, COVAX is still significantly underfunded and there are concerns regarding supply chains. While capital and resource transfer from wealthy countries to poorer ones is surely needed in the current pandemic response, any system that solely relies on aid will ultimately fail to achieve equity. In the setting of vaccine scarcity, in which suppliers are unable to deliver doses as scheduled and countries are banning exports to keep vaccines at home, there is a risk that COVAX aid-recipient states will fall further down the priority list, awaiting the leftover vaccines from the rich country stockpiles.16–18¶ What may be most pernicious about the COVAX scheme, however, is that rich countries and their pharmaceutical companies have repeatedly used it as a shield to deflect demands for IP waivers. This is an enduring problem with aid: it papers over and distracts our attention away from the underlying structural violence. And in so doing, it maintains and perpetuates inequalities. Over 50 years ago, Kwame Nkrumah observed how aid is a ‘revolving credit’ which returns to countries of the global North in the form of increased profits.19 To the extent that COVAX is being leveraged to protect corporate patents and profits, Nkrumah’s words continue to be germane¶. The third approach is focused on pooling, temporary waivers, or suspension of IP. In May 2020, the WHO created the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool for companies to share IP and transfer technologies in a coordinated manner. But to date, not a single company has utilised the transfer process—likely because such forms of global IP sharing would quell profits, even if royalties are included.20 Pharmaceutical companies and universities prefer one-off transfer deals because it enables them to set their own terms with non-disclosure agreements. Given that they are accountable to shareholders and boards—not patients—financial incentives will drive transfer decisions, not public health demand.¶ Following the blockages at the WHO around IP, attention shifted towards the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In October 2020, India and South Africa proposed a temporary waiver of IP rights to COVID-19 technologies for the duration of the pandemic, so that all manufacturers with sufficient capacity and shared know-how could start production.21 Although backed by over 100 countries within the WTO and a global campaign for the ‘People’s Vaccine,’ the proposal has been repeatedly blocked at every committee meeting since then by select wealthy countries with large pharmaceutical industries, including the UK, Japan and EU states.22 23¶ Those who oppose the IP waiver argue that it will not do anything to solve the problem: even if you were to liberate the recipe for the vaccines, low-income and middle-income countries do not have the capacity to produce it.24 But this argument is specious. For one, several middle-income countries—including India, Brazil, Senegal and South Africa—do have the ability to ramp up production by repurposing existing manufacturing capacity.25 In addition, an IP waiver can and should be supplemented with technology transfers, logistical support and financial investment to facilitate this repurposing process. And the most important point is that such a waiver could drastically reduce costs across the board, making vaccine imports more affordable for poor countries.¶ Opponents of the waiver also claim that IP-related obstacles can be addressed through existing arrangements for ‘compulsory licensing’ under the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).26 But the past evidence suggests that this process is slow, cumbersome and subject to various shaming practices by the international community.27 28 Some point instead to the possibility of voluntary licensing. But voluntary licenses are often executed secretly and are limited to companies or governments that can afford them. The University of Pennsylvania, which owns IP rights relating to the mRNA vaccines, is helping Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok develop a vaccine production facility. This partnership was possible because Thailand—unlike other middle-income countries—was able to put up the money.29 Poorer countries are left out. Sharing of IP and technology transfers can and will accelerate global vaccine production. The question is on whose terms. Organisations such as the WHO and African Union are currently mobilising support and resources to accelerate production in low-income and middle-income countries.30 31 But these efforts will be to waste unless IP for COVID-19 technologies is shared broadly and quickly.¶ Vaccine coloniality¶ Donor-based approaches to vaccine equity are grounded in old, even colonial ideas of aid and dependency, which have failed to serve the health needs of the Majority World or deliver on health equity. This failed model has not promoted health equity in the past and is clearly inadequate in the present, on account of dependency on donor whims (the bilateral ‘leftovers’ approach), persistent funding gaps and shortfalls (COVAX), and time-consuming diplomacy and filibustering over what is or is it not within current trade rules (WTO).¶ Once again in the political economy of global health, the charitable model of COVAX becomes the smokescreen for inequitable systems. When states are asked about their stockpiling, they point to COVAX. When pharmaceutical companies are asked about IP, they point to COVAX or their low-cost commitment. The focus on a donor-based model of aid in achieving vaccine equity has distracted leaders from the ideologies, economic systems and trade regulations that leave access to medicine to the forces of the marketplace rather than global health priorities.32 Achieving global vaccine justice requires a rapid shift in trade regulations and contract transparency that streamlines IP sharing and technology transfers. The resultant collaborations across economies will not only accelerate vaccine production but will also increase competition and push vaccine prices down.¶ Finally, old models of vaccine equity have not kept pace with changes in discourse and thinking around global health governance, equity and justice. 2021 is not the early 2000s, where new public–private partnerships or funding models were de rigueur. Donor countries are increasingly wary of aid dependency as they pay the cost of continuing high profile health programmes with diminishing strategic returns. Aid-recipient countries are similarly exasperated by funding gaps that lead to delays and materiel shortfalls, the NGO-industrial complex and attendant consultants that rationalise them, and fundamentally, by the notion that their populations only seem to matter when another state can capitalise on them.¶ Conclusion¶ Vaccine apartheid is only one symptom of broader global health inequalities that have their roots in colonialism and persist today because of neocolonial forms of power. As Grosfoguel writes, ‘The heterogeneous and multiple global structures put in place over a period of 450 years did not evaporate with the juridical–political decolonisation of the periphery over the past 50 years. We continue to live under the same ‘colonial power matrix.’ With juridical–political decolonisation we moved from a period of ‘global colonialism’ to the current period of ‘global coloniality.’33 Vaccine justice starts with moving beyond aid models of vaccine donation, in which poorer countries are gifted vaccine leftovers. It demands rapidly achieving global consensus for the IP waiver, democratising vaccine IP and know-how and supporting low-income and middle-income countries to build manufacturing capacity for this pandemic and the next. These steps can mark the start of a reparative justice movement in global health that demands we confront and overturn colonial legacies that continue to devastate the health of low- and middle-income countries.34 A commitment to funding vaccine justice in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic can be a first step in this direction. Compulsory licensing is not sufficient – drug company resistance, IP thickets, and devolved decision-making. Stiglitz and Wallach 4/26 - Joseph E. Stiglitz and Lori Wallach Joseph E. Stiglitz, co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Sciences, teaches at Columbia University. Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch., “Opinion: Preserving intellectual property barriers to covid-19 vaccines is morally wrong and foolish,” Washington Post (Web). April 26, 2021. Accessed Aug. 10, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/26/preserving-intellectual-property-barriers-covid-19-vaccines-is-morally-wrong-foolish/ AT Unfortunately, the drug companies have consistently done whatever they can to preserve their monopoly control. Even today, as they battle the waiver and argue that existing compulsory licensing rights are sufficient, they lobby the U.S. government to sanction countries that use that tool.¶ These corporations have also undermined this option by building “thickets” of intellectual property barriers. They fortify their monopolies by registering exclusive rights to industrial designs and undisclosed data, such as trade secrets and test data, in addition to numerous patents and copyrights for each medicine. Each element would require a license, and the WTO’s flexibilities might not even encompass all of them.¶ Making matters more difficult, “product-by-product” and “country-by-country” compulsory licensing is nigh impossible to coordinate across countries for medicines with complex global supply chains, such as covid-19 vaccines. Vaccine shortfall causes widespread death and poverty. Public Citizen 3/1 - Public Citizen “Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people – not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country. We don’t participate in partisan political activities or endorse any candidates for elected office. We take no government or corporate money, which enables us to remain fiercely independent and call out bad actors – no matter who they are or how much power and money they have.”, “Backgrounder: WTO-Required Monopolies for Pharmaceutical Corporations Obstruct Global Production of COVID-19 Vaccines and Treatment,” Public Citizen Global Trade Watch Series. March 1, 2021. Accessed Aug. 12, 2021. https://www.citizen.org/article/wto-required-monopolies-for-pharmaceutical-corporations-obstruct-global-production-of-covid-19-vaccines-and-treatments/ AT It is obvious that current production capacity cannot supply enough vaccines for the entire world. Many people in low- and middle-income countries around the globe will not get vaccinated until at least 2022 unless the world manufactures many more doses, according to the British Medical Journal. The world’s poorest countries may wait until 2024 for mass immunization, if it happens at all, reports the Economist Intelligence Unit. The global vaccine apartheid unfolding right now could cost millions of lives and push tens of millions more into poverty. The devastation will be felt for a generation. A new International Chamber of Commerce report concluded that the world could face economic losses of more than $9 trillion under the scenario of wealthy nations being fully vaccinated by mid-2021, but poor countries largely shut out. Wealthy countries like the United States would bear nearly half of that hit. Vaccinating just half of low- and middle-income countries’ populations could reduce global losses by $5.5 trillion. Poverty and disease are mutually reinforcing, causing staggering suffering and injustice. Hollis and Pogge ’08 - Aidan Hollis Associate Professor of Economics, the University of Calgary and Thomas Pogge Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale University, “The Health Impact Fund Making New Medicines Accessible for All,” Incentives for Global Health (2008) AT In 2004, some 970 million people, around 15 percent of the world’s population, were living below the extreme poverty line of $1 a day (more strictly defi ned, $392.88 annually) in 1993 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms (Chen and Ravallion 2007, 16579).3 Furthermore, those living below this very low poverty line fell on average around 28 percent below it. Th eir average annual purchasing power therefore corresponded to approximately $420 in the US in 2008 dollars.4¶ Th ese are the poorest of the poor. Th e World Bank also uses a somewhat less miserly poverty line, namely $2 dollar a day, or an annual amount of $785.76 PPP 1993. Th e Bank’s data show that around 40 percent of the world’s population, or over 2.5 billion people, lived in income poverty so defi ned in 2004,5 with this population falling on average 41 percent below this higher line.6 Individuals I;\pp
\n this much larger group could buy, on average, about as much in 2004 as could be bought in the US in 2008 for $690.¶ The Effects of Global Income Poverty on Health¶ The effects of such extreme income poverty are foreseeable and extensively documented. It is estimated that around 13 percent of all human beings (830 million) are chronically undernourished, 17 percent (1.1 billion) lack access to safe water, and 41 percent (2.6 billion) lack access to basic sanitation (UNDP 2006, 174, 33). About 31 percent (2 billion) lack access to crucial drugs and 25 percent (1.6 billion) lack electricity (Fogarty n.d., IEA 2002). Some 780 million adults are illiterate (UNESCO 2006), and 14 percent of children aged between fi ve and 17 (218 million) are child laborers, more than half in hazardous work (ILO 2006, 6).¶ Worldwide, diseases related to poverty, including communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritionrelated diseases, comprise over 50 percent of the burden of disease in low-income countries, nearly ten times their relative burden in developed countries (WHO 2006b, 3). If the developed world had its proportional share of poverty-related deaths (onethird of all deaths), severe poverty would kill some 16,000 Americans and 26,000 citizens of the European Union each week.¶ The cycle of mutually reinforcing poverty and disease besetting low income countries, and particularly the poorer communities in these countries, could be broken by signifi cantly reducing severe poverty. But it is also possible to make substantial progress against the global burden of disease more directly by improving health care in developing countries.¶ Poverty does not merely render poor people more vulnerable to disease, but also makes it less likely that they can obtain medical treatment for the diseases they contract. This is because in poor countries medical care is rarely available for free, and poor people are typically unable to buy either the care needed by themselves or their families or the insurance policies that would guarantee them such care. The price of health care in poor countries therefore also plays a crucial role in explaining the catastrophic health situation among the global poor.
II. Solvency Plan text: The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to waive intellectual property protections for Covid-19 related medicines. Public Citizen 6/22 - Public Citizen et. al, “Please Speedily Secure Implementation of a COVID-19 Emergency Waiver of WTO TRIPS Rules for Vaccines, Tests and Treatments,” Open Letter to President Joe Biden. June 22, 2021. https://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/COVIDTRIPSWaiver_SignOnLtr2_062221.pdf#new_tab AT We the undersigned organizations respectfully urge you to speedily secure a waiver that is:¶ • Comprehensive: The U.S. government must secure swift adoption of a temporary waiver of the patent, copyright, industrial design and undisclosed data rules of the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement with respect to COVID-19-related medical products. The scope of the waiver must extend beyond vaccines to also cover the diagnostic tests needed to detect outbreaks and variants; the treatments, ventilators and other medical devices necessary to shorten lockdowns and save the lives of the millions who will contract COVID-19 before sufficient vaccine doses can be made and the materials, components, means and methods of manufacturing such goods.¶ • Swift: The WTO Director General’s December 2021 deadline for a final waiver text is far too late to meet the urgency of the pandemic, which requires agreement on a waiver in a matter of weeks, not months.¶ • Long-lasting: A waiver must be of sufficient duration to incentivize and sustain increases in manufacturing capacity for and output of medical goods to prevent, contain or treat COVID19, taking into consideration that the pandemic may yet escape current vaccines. We support the waiver sponsors’ proposal that the initial waiver last three years and be regularly reviewed thereafter, particularly given uncertainties around variants, the need for boosters, and what levels of immunization may be needed.¶ Current global production capacity of COVID-19 vaccines, medicines, and diagnostic tests cannot come close to meeting global needs to detect, treat, prevent, or contain COVID-19. Absent significant increases in vaccine production, many in developing nations will not have access to vaccines until 2024. This lag would mean more deaths and the greater chances for development of new variants that can undermine vaccines' achievements to date.¶ Every country should have the right to develop and make their own vaccines free from the worry that they and their suppliers would be sued by IP holders. To date, vaccine intellectual property rightsholders have refused to issue open licenses under transparent and accountable terms and conditions, and transfer technology fully to and negotiate payment terms with qualified manufacturers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, creating supply shortages and production bottlenecks and prohibiting urgently needed production of doses worldwide. The worst global health crisis in a century has resulted in at least 3.5 million deaths worldwide and is conservatively estimated to cost the U.S. alone $16 trillion in economic losses, accompanied by yet greater global losses that have impoverished hundreds of millions of people worldwide. We are in a race against time to save lives and prevent new variants. Absent a major increase in vaccines, treatments, diagnostic tests, ventilators, and other COVID-19-related medical supplies, the pandemic will rage largely unmitigated among a significant share of the world’s population. COVID-19 infections will increase, resulting in increased deaths and long-term damage to the health of millions of people, a dragging blow to the global economy and a risk that vaccine-resistant variants will put the world back on lockdown and evade immunity for those previously infected and/or vaccinated. The long-term impact on people’s health and the world’s health system would be unprecedented. A waiver would increase leverage over pharma and provide legal certainty needed to spur critical production. Stiglitz and Wallach 4/26 - Joseph E. Stiglitz and Lori Wallach Joseph E. Stiglitz, co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Sciences, teaches at Columbia University. Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch., “Opinion: Preserving intellectual property barriers to covid-19 vaccines is morally wrong and foolish,” Washington Post (Web). April 26, 2021. Accessed Aug. 10, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/26/preserving-intellectual-property-barriers-covid-19-vaccines-is-morally-wrong-foolish/ AT A waiver would immediately increase government leverage over vaccine makers that refuse to license the technology. Firms could choose to either expand production by negotiating with governments, alternative suppliers and global initiatives, or risk governments circumventing them and forcing the transfer of technology.¶ A waiver would also provide legal certainty for governments and investors that are inclined to repurpose existing pharmaceutical manufacturing or build new facilities but are fearful of intellectual property liability. And it could boost production of covid-19 treatments unavailable in much of the world, as well as diagnostic tests and vaccine supply chain products. Legal certainty unlocks global production. Public Citizen 3/29 - Public Citizen “Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people – not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country. We don’t participate in partisan political activities or endorse any candidates for elected office. We take no government or corporate money, which enables us to remain fiercely independent and call out bad actors – no matter who they are or how much power and money they have.”, “Waiver of the WTO’s Intellectual Property Rules: Facts vs. Common Myths,” Public Citizen Global Trade Watch Series. March 29, 2021. Accessed Aug. 10, 2021. https://www.citizen.org/article/waiver-of-the-wtos-intellectual-property-rules-myths-vs-facts/ AT Most critically, there simply is not enough supply to go around now or for every year in the future during which the whole world will need regular COVID vaccination to keep the virus under control. Thankfully, scores of countries are ready to invest in building new or repurposing existing production capacity. That is why more than 100 countries support a waiver of the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). These countries seek certainty that if they adjust their domestic laws and practices to support that investment by providing access to the necessary technology, they will not get dragged into expansive WTO litigation or face retaliatory sanctions from countries claiming WTO violations. The waiver will also serve as a worldwide buffer against the political pressure and legal harassment to which Big Pharma subjects countries that seek to promote affordable access to medicines.¶ In many countries, the regulatory authorities that had to approve domestic use of various vaccines and other COVID-related medical products have significant information from the firms that they could share with skilled teams from local universities, government agencies and pharmaceutical manufacturers — if they were not obliged by WTO rules to guarantee monopoly control of it. And world-class pharmaceutical firms already are making generic versions of new cutting-edge HIV-AIDS medicines and pumping out vaccines based on the platform that, for instance, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine uses. Manufacturing capacity is widespread around the world. Public Citizen 3/29 - Public Citizen “Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people – not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country. We don’t participate in partisan political activities or endorse any candidates for elected office. We take no government or corporate money, which enables us to remain fiercely independent and call out bad actors – no matter who they are or how much power and money they have.”, “Waiver of the WTO’s Intellectual Property Rules: Facts vs. Common Myths,” Public Citizen Global Trade Watch Series. March 29, 2021. Accessed Aug. 10, 2021. https://www.citizen.org/article/waiver-of-the-wtos-intellectual-property-rules-myths-vs-facts/ AT In the press and on Capitol Hill, Big Pharma is pushing a Big Lie. The claim is that a lack of manufacturing capacity, not pharmaceutical corporation’s monopoly intellectual property (IP) protections, are thwarting greater production of COVID-19 vaccines. A related argument, with decidedly racist overtones, is that COVID-19 vaccines are too complicated for producers in developing countries to make successfully. The reality is that in every region of the world, there are multiple producers that could be greatly increasing global vaccine supplies if the technology and know-how were shared.¶ Just in Africa, “Biovac and Aspen in South Africa, Institute Pasteur in Senegal, and Vacsera in Egypt could rapidly retool factories to make mRNA vaccines,” notes a group of medicine-production experts in a recent Foreign Policy article. Indeed, a former Moderna director of chemistry revealed that with enough technology transfer and know- how-sharing, a modern factory should be able to get mRNA vaccine production online in, at most, three to four months. The Serum Institute in India already is slated to produce the AstraZeneca and Novavax vaccines, while Moderna declined to partner with a qualified Bangladeshi vaccine maker, claiming its engineers were too busy to focus beyond U.S. and EU production. In Latin America, existing facilities in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico under contract to monopoly holders are already pumping out vials, and in countries like Chile and Colombia, the pharmaceutical industry has expressed willingness to kickstart vaccine production.¶ Existing and planned contract manufacturing arrangements prove facilities in developing countries certainly can produce COVID-19 vaccines. But unless technology and know-how are shared more openly, the monopoly holders maintain absolute control over how much can be produced, what the price is and where it will be sold. So, 91 of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine that South African firm Aspen will manufacture must be shipped for sale outside South Africa, according to South Africa’s WTO Counselor. And the Serum Institute is barred from supplying upper- middle-income and high-income countries with the AstraZeneca vaccines it makes, meaning AstraZeneca can artificially segment the global market and ensure that it is the only supplier of the Oxford vaccine in the most profitable national markets, according to Doctors Without Borders.¶ Most critically, there simply is not enough supply to go around now or for every year in the future during which the whole world will need regular COVID vaccination to keep the virus under control. Thankfully, scores of countries are ready to invest in building new or repurposing existing production capacity. That is why more than 100 countries support a waiver of the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). These countries seek certainty that if they adjust their domestic laws and practices to support that investment by providing access to the necessary technology, they will not get dragged into expansive WTO litigation or face retaliatory sanctions from countries claiming WTO violations. The waiver will also serve as a worldwide buffer against the political pressure and legal harassment to which Big Pharma subjects countries that seek to promote affordable access to medicines.¶ In many countries, the regulatory authorities that had to approve domestic use of various vaccines and other COVID-related medical products have significant information from the firms that they could share with skilled teams from local universities, government agencies and pharmaceutical manufacturers — if they were not obliged by WTO rules to guarantee monopoly control of it. And world-class pharmaceutical firms already are making generic versions of new cutting-edge HIV-AIDS medicines and pumping out vaccines based on the platform that, for instance, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine uses. III. Framing The Aff challenges dehumanizing cultural frames that allow us to ignore human suffering. Recognition of common vulnerability is key to a politics that rejects violence, oppression, and indifference. Butler ’04 - Judith Butler Prof. of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso (2006; First Published 2004). pp. 30-35 AT Is there something to be gained from grieving, from tarrying with grief, from remaining exposed to its unbearability and not endeavoring to seek a resolution for grief through violence? Is there something to be gained in the political domain by maintaining grief as part of the framework within which we think our international ties? If we stay with the sense of loss, are we left feeling only passive and powerless, as some might fear? Or are we, rather, returned to a sense of human vulnerability, to our collective responsibility for the physical lives of one another? Could the experience of a dislocation of First World safety not condition the insight into the radically inequitable ways that corporeal vulnerability is distributed globally? To foreclose that vulnerability, to banish it, to make ourselves secure at the expense of every other human consideration is to eradicate one of the most important resources from which we must take our bearings and find our way.¶ To grieve, and to make grief itself into a resource for politics, is not to be resigned to inaction, but it may be understood as the slow process by which we develop a point of identification with suffering itself. The disorientation of grief- “Who have I become?” or, indeed, “What is left of me?” “What is it in the Other that I have lost?” – posits the “I” in the mode of unknowingness.¶ But this can be a point of departure for a new understanding if the narcissistic preoccupation of melancholia can be moved into a consideration of the vulnerability of others. Then we might critically evaluate and oppose the conditions under which certain human lives are more vulnerable than others, and thus certain human lives are more grievable than others. From where might a principle emerge by which we vow to protect others from the kinds of violence we have suffered, if not from an apprehension of a common human vulnerability? I do not mean to deny that vulnerability is differentiated, that it is allocated differentially across the globe. I do not even mean to presume upon a common notion of the human, although to speak in its “name” is already (or perhaps only) to fathom its possibility.¶ I am referring to violence, vulnerability, and mourning, but there is a more general conception of the human with which I am trying to work here, one in which we are, from the start, given over to the other, one in which we are, from the start, even prior to individuation itself and, by virtue of bodily requirements, given over to some set of primary others: this conception means that we are vulnerable to those we are too young to know and to judge and, hence, vulnerable to violence; but also vulnerable to another range of touch, a range that includes the eradication of our being at the one end, and the physical support for our lives at the other.¶ Although I am insisting on referring to a common human vulnerability, one that emerges with life itself, I also insist that we cannot recover the source of this vulnerability: it precedes the formation of the “I.” This is a condition, a condition of being laid bare from the start and with which we cannot argue. I mean, that we can argue with it, but we are perhaps foolish, if not dangerous, when we do. I do not mean to suggest that the necessary support for a newborn is always there. Clearly, it is not, and for some this primary scene is a scene of abandonment or violence or starvation, that theirs are bodies given over to nothing, or to brutality, or to no sustenance.¶ We cannot understand vulnerability as a deprivation, however, unless we understand the need that is thwarted. Such infants still must be apprehended as given over, as given over to no one or to some insufficient support, or to an abandonment. It would be difficult, it not impossible, to understand how humans suffer from oppression without seeing how this primary condition is exploited and exploitable, thwarted and denied. The condition of primary vulnerability, of being given over to the touch of the other, even if there is no other there, and no support for our lives, signifies a primary helplessness and need, one to which any society must attend. Lives are supported and maintained differently, and there are radically different ways in which human physical vulnerability is distributed across the globe. Certain lives will be highly protected, and the abrogation of their claims to sanctity will be sufficient to mobilize the forces of war. Other lives will not find such fast and furious support and will not even qualify as “grievable.”¶ A hierarchy of grief could no doubt be enumerated. We have seen it already, in the genre of the obituary, where lives are quickly tidied up and summarized, humanized, usually married, or on the way to be, heterosexual, happy, monogamous. But this is just a sign of another differential relation to life, since we seldom, if ever, hear the names of the thousands of Palestinians who have died by the Israeli military with United States support, or any number of Afghan people, children and adults. Do they have names, faces, personal histories, family, favorite hobbies, slogans by which they life? What defense against the apprehension of loss is at work in the blithe way in which we accept deaths caused by military means with a shrug or with self-righteousness or with clear vindictiveness? To what extent have Arab peoples, predominantly practitioners of Islam, fallen outside the “human” as it has been naturalized in its “Western” mold by the contemporary workings of humanism? What are the cultural contours of the human at work here? How do our cultural frames for thinking the human set limits on the kinds of losses we can avow as loss? After all, if someone is lost, and that person is not someone, then what and where is the loss, and how does mourning take place?¶ This last is surely a question that lesbian, gay, and hi-studies have asked in relation to violence against sexual minorities; that transgendered people have asked as they are singled out for harassment and sometimes murder; that intersexed people have asked, whose formative years are so often marked by unwanted violence against their bodies in the name of a normative notion of the human, a normative notion of what the body of a human must be. This question is no doubt, as well, the basis of a profound affinity between movements centering on gender and sexuality and efforts to counter the normative human morphologies and capacities that condemn or efface those who are physically challenged. It must also be part of the affinity with anti-racist struggles, given the racial differential that undergirds the culturally viable notions of the human, ones that we see acted out in dramatic and terrifying ways in the global arena at the present time.¶ I am referring not only to humans not regarded as humans, and thus to a restrictive conception of the human that is based upon their exclusion. It is not a matter of a simple entry of the excluded into an established ontology, but an insurrection at the level of ontology, a critical opening up of the questions, What is real? Whose lives are real? How might reality be remade? Those who are unreal have, in a sense, already suffered the violence of derealization. What, then, is the relation between violence and those lives considered as "unreal"? Does violence effect that unreality? Does violence take place on the condition of that unreality?¶ If violence is done against those who are unreal, then, from the perspective of violence, it fails to injure or negate those lives since those lives are already negated. But they have a strange way of remaining animated and so must be negated again (and again). They cannot be mourned because they are always already lost or, rather, never "were," and they must be killed, since they seem to live on, stubbornly, in this state of deadness. Violence renews itself in the face of the apparent inexhaustibility of its object. The derealization of the "Other" means that it is neither alive nor dead, but interminably spectral. The infinite paranoia that imagines the war against terrorism as a war without end will be one that justifies itself endlessly in relation to the spectral infinity of its enemy, regardless of whether or not there are established grounds to suspect the continuing operation of terror cells with violent aims.¶ How do we understand this derealization? It is one thing to argue that first, on the level of discourse, certain lives are not considered lives at all, they cannot be humanized, that they fit no dominant frame for the human, and that their dehumanization occurs first, at this level, and that this level then gives rise to a physical violence that in some sense delivers the message of dehumanization that is already at work in the culture. It is another thing to say that discourse itself effects violence through omission. If 2oo,ooo Iraqi children were killed during the Gulf War and its aftermath/ do we have an image, a frame for any of those lives, singly or collectively? Is there a story we might find about those deaths in the media? Are there names attached to those children?¶ There are no obituaries for the war casualties that the United States inflicts, and there cannot be. If there were to be an obituary, there would have had to have been a life, a life worth noting, a life worth valuing and preserving, a life that qualifies for recognition. Although we might argue that it would be impractical to write obituaries for all those people, or for all people, I think we have to ask, again and again, how the obituary functions as the instrument by which grievability is publicly distributed. It is the means by which a life becomes, or fails to become, a publicly grievable life, an icon for national self-recognition, the means by which a life becomes noteworthy. As a result, we have to consider the obituary as an act of nation-building. The matter is not a simple one, for, if a life is not grievable, it is not quite a life; it does not qualify as a life and is not worth a note. It is already the unburied, if not the unburiable.¶ It is not simply, then, that there is a "discourse" of dehumanization that produces these effects, but rather that there is a limit to discourse that establishes the limits of human intelligibility. It is not just that a death is poorly marked, but that it is unmarkable. Such a death vanishes, not into explicit discourse, but in the ellipses by which public discourse proceeds. The queer lives that vanished on September I I were not publicly welcomed into the idea of national identity built in the obituary pages, and their closest relations were only belatedly and selectively (the marital norm holding sway once again) made eligible for benefits. But this should come as no surprise, when we think about how few deaths from AIDS were publicly grievable losses, and how, for instance, the extensive deaths now taking place in Africa are also, in the media, for the most part unmarkable and ungrievable.
The Aff challenges the hegemonic ideology of the status quo by rejecting sacrificial rationalizations. That logic is the basis for colonialism, slavery, genocide, war, and global poverty. Santos 3 2003, Boaventura de Souza Santos is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, “Collective Suicide?”, Bad Subjects, Issue # 63 , http://www.ces.fe.uc.pt/opiniao/bss/072en.php According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism, with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was in Stalinism, with the Gulag and in Nazism, with the holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it. Sacrificial genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion that is manifested in the belief that there are no alternatives to the present-day reality and that the problems and difficulties confronting it arise from failing to take its logic of development to its ultimate consequences. If there is unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not the result of market failures; instead, it is the outcome of the market laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this is not due to the violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically eradicate all terrorists and potential terrorists. This political logic is based on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of alternatives; it is ultra-conservative in that it aims to infinitely reproduce the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history. During the last hundred years, the West has experienced three versions of this logic, and, therefore, seen three versions of the end of history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and neoliberalism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two periods involved the destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it in the face of social actors sufficiently powerful to be able to privatize the State and international institutions in their favour. I have described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong public opinion, worldwide, against the war is found to be incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by supposedly democratic rulers. At all these moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism, predominates, the idea of a looming collective suicide, only preventable by the massive destruction of the other. Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the efficacy of its destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes. In its sacrificial genocide version, neoliberalism is a mixture of market radicalization, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Its death drive takes a number of forms, from the idea of "discardable populations", referring to citizens of the Third World not capable of being exploited as workers and consumers, to the concept of "collateral damage" , to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of thousands of innocent civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable calculations by the Non-Governmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260 thousand civilians will die during the war and in the three months after (this is without there being civil war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100 billion dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the world's poorest countries for four years. Is it possible to fight this death drive? We must bear in mind that, historically, sacrificial destruction has always been linked to the economic pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the imperial design of radically changing the terms of economic, social, political and cultural exchanges in the face of falling efficiency rates postulated by the maximalist logic of the totalitarian illusion in operation. It is as though hegemonic powers, both when they are on the rise and when they are in decline, repeatedly go through times of primitive accumulation, legitimizing the most shameful violence in the name of futures where, by definition, there is no room for what must be destroyed. In today's version, the period of primitive accumulation consists of combining neoliberal economic globalization with the globalization of war. The machine of democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction.