COMMONS MAGAZINE
A van named Self-Defense cruises up and down Calibeshie’s one street in the early morning light. Four passes as the village gradually wakens, nets only six passengers. Calibeshie is strung out along the highway taking up almost half a mile of the Northeastern coastline of the Caribbean island of Dominica. The houses are ramshackle, once mostly tin and now tending towards the concrete. Every second house doubles as some kind of commercial establishment either a “snackett” where you can grab an early morning “bake” or a shop selling some kind of “provisions”.
For those of us who don’t venture into the laboratories of science, it’s difficult to appreciate how fragmented, proprietary and inefficient drug and disease research truly is. At a time when the Internet is making it easier than ever to share and collaborate, some of the most well-funded, high-tech scientific projects today still operate in their own isolated silos. They are effectively cut off from vast quantities of potentially useful research, scientific literature, emerging ideas and potential collaborators.
Dr. James E. Hansen might be described as Paul Revere in a labcoat.
In 1988 the physicist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies first sounded the warning that global climate change was coming—soon. Speaking before Congress, he testified that global climate change was not a potential problem for the distant future. It was happening all around us.
He spoke to Congress again this week, 20 years to the day of his famous testimony, and took the opportunity to discuss what can be done to curtail climate change.
The water commons as a concept is easy to understand. And in a time when our planet is threatened by global warming, the importance of the idea is all-too-obvious.
Put simply, the water commons means that water is no one’s property; it rightfully belongs to all of humanity and to the earth itself. It is our duty to protect the quality and availability of water for everyone around the planet. This ethic should be the foundation of all decisions made about use of this life-giving resource. Water is not a commodity to be sold or squandered or hoarded.
The question on everyone’s minds here in the Upper Midwest is: What’s causing these floods? In 1993, Des Moines and many Mississippi River towns were devastated. Then in 1997, Grand Forks, North Dakota, was nearly wiped off the map as the Red River rose to record highs. Last year, huge floods struck southern Minnesota in the midst of what had been a serious drought. And now, a number of cities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri have been submerged.
The familiar storyline of science fiction is the evil dystopia – the totalitarian society of the future in which large, faceless government agencies and corporations use sophisticated technologies to pry into every corner of our lives. The goal is to neutralize dissent and shield the exercise of power from accountability. However necessary at times, surveillance is a crude display of power, a unilateral override of the “consent of the governed.”
The point of patents for drugs is to give pharmaceutical companies a chance to recover their significant research costs, and turn a profit, before a drug enters the equivalent of the public domain. At that point, under a 1984 law that authorizes generic drug-making, any company who satisfies basic safety standards can also manufacture and sell the drug – usually at significant savings to consumers.
The biggest international gathering of people devoted to free culture will convene in Sapporo, Japan for a four-day confab, from July 29-August 1. Hosted by iCommons, the spinoff organization created by Creative Commons, the event will feature ten keynote addresses by leading figures in the commons world (including OTC’s own David Bollier).
That great, reliable engine of daily news, the Associated Press, has just given us a case study on the dangers of treating copyrighted works as “property.” The AP apparently regards its news articles as its exclusive property, and treats even partial use of them as theft.
The destruction of a commons is sometimes felt as a dramatic loss— a “no trespassing” sign posted at a popular gathering spot or the corporate takeover of an important public asset. This loss often inspires opposition, which can reverse the decision or at least raise awareness about the issue.
The New York Times Book Review’s front-page review of Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It (Bloomsbury) is full of striking nuggets of information from what people are now calling “the water wars.”
• The CEO of Quaker Oats, which markets Propel Fitness Water and Gatorade, once declared, “the biggest enemy is tap water.”
• The National Coalition of American Nuns opposes bottled water on the moral grounds that life’s essential resources should not be privatized.
Here are two resources that will be helpful to anyone tracking the latest trends in privatization. The first is a news-digest blog, PrivatizationWatch.org, a joint project of the Center for Study of Responsive Law and Essential Information in Washington, D.C. Five times a week, the site has brief summaries of the latest business attempts privatize the public’s highways, parks, schools, sports stadia, public spaces and other infrastructure.
If Major League Baseball (MLB) wants to know why fans are fleeing for other sports and baseball is no longer the national pastime, it need no look no further than the nearest mirror. Not only have ticket prices gone through the roof ($300-plus for a family of four to attend a Red Sox game), Major League Baseball acts as if it owns every fragment of the game.
On a problem as huge and frightening as climate change it’s sometimes the small stuff that really gets us thinking.
Predictions of melting polar ice caps inundating seacoast cities and blistering heat turning the Great Plains to desert boggles the mind, often leaving me dumbfounded and defeated rather than charged up about saving the earth.
Imagine what would happen if you took down road signs and traffic signals. More accidents would surely result, or at least significant confusion and slower traffic. Or would it? The surprising thing is that a number of cities around the world have actually done this, and experienced dramatic declines in traffic accidents.
In a recent interview with Enrique Peñalosa — the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, and champion of enlightened urban design — reporter Deborah Solomon elicits the insight that sidewalks are a critical design element for democracy. (New York Times Magazine, June 8, 2008) As mayor of Bogotá, Peñalosa famously banned parking on sidewalks as part of a larger effort to revive human-scale city life.
The government of Quebec is considering legislation that would establish a policy that water legally belongs collectively to the people of Quebec, the Montreal Gazette reported last week. Bill 92 would for the first time give the government the right to require permits for water use by bulk users of water (75,000 liters a day, or the equivalent of two above-ground swimming pools). It would also let the government sue companies that degrade the quality of water or alter the environment.
No democratic society worthy of the name can govern itself without transparency and information. It sounds basic, of course, but the past seven years have seen an unprecedented suppression of government information, scientific research, court documents and the rights of access to such stuff. What a pleasure to see that the tide may be turning.
To encourage students to appreciate the value of the information commons, four library associations, Students for Free Culture and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups have announced the second annual Sparky Awards, a video competition that seeks to recognize “the best new short videos on the value of sharing.”
What happens when corporate marketers commandeer a grassroots health movement and turn it into a mini-industry? Samantha King provides a revealing look in her book, Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy (University of Minnesota). King, a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, describes how corporate marketers have transformed a once-stigmatized disease into a branded cause that subtly serves their commercial self-interests.