Scientists Don't Want The Moon To Become Like West Virginia

Imagine Freedom Industries with a charter to operate on the Moon! This week, as the president of Freedom Industries, which is affiliated with the Koch brothers, insisted that there's too much of a fuss being made over the toxic spill on the Elk River, even just touching-- not drinking, touching-- the water that comes out of their taps induces non-stop vomiting for folks living in tens of thousands of homes in West Virginia. And Freedom Industries is not subject to any permits or inspections by the EPA.

The New York Times reported, “According to Department of Environmental Protection officials, Freedom Industries, which owns the chemical tank that ruptured, is exempt from Department of Environmental Protection inspections and permitting since it stores chemicals, and does not produce them.”

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has since vowed to “look into tighter regulation of chemical storage facilities.” But looking into additional regulations is not the same as actually implementing them.

The current political climate has been dominated by Republicans pushing to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and rollbacks on government regulations for businesses.

Additionally, the chemical spilled was used to wash coal before it’s sent to market and the coal industry has a powerful deregulation lobby.

Freedom’s crippled holding tank might not have passed an inspection if one were conducted. The leaky tank was part of an old Pennzoil refinery “dating back to the 1930s or 1940s,” a county official told CNN. And Charleston's Mayor Jones believes the chemicals went through “holes in a retaining wall.”

Since the inch-wide holes in the retaining wall were big enough to see, there is a chance Freedom Industries might have known that their 70 to 80-year-old tanks were in need of replacement or repair. It is therefore possible that the company did not incur the expense of fixing them because they didn’t have to.

If ever there were a classic case of deregulation disaster, this is it.

And the civilized world doesn't want to see American Republicans wreaking environmental havoc on the moon for the sake of their primitive, anti-social greed and selfishness ideology. Scientists want the UN to move forward to keep the GOP from fouling the moon-- now.

No one legally owns the moon but there is a case for developing the law as space exploration continues, a planetary science professor says.

Under current UN law, member states are "prohibited from appropriating the moon."

But Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science at Birkbeck College, said there was now a case for developing the treaty to include private companies that may want to exploit it for its minerals.

…“There’s a strong case for developing international law in this area because in 1967 it was not envisaged that anyone other than nation states would be able to explore the moon. Clearly that is changing now and there is a case for developing the outer space treaty to include private organisations that may wish to explout the moon.”

He said there was also a case for developing the treaty in light of private companies who may in the future want to mine the moon for its minerals, but that it was unnecessary to worry about this at the moment as scientific exploration was still ongoing.