Is the Moon the world's next flashpoint? – with A.C. Grayling and Alex Andreou

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Moon is packed with precious resources – silicon for microchips, manganese for batteries, and titanium for missiles. As private companies, Japan, China, Russia, India and others rush to claim our lunar neighbour, will they look after humanity’s interests or their own? And what happens when these big, belligerent actors collide? A.C. Grayling, writer, broadcaster and philosophy professor, has just published Who Owns the Moon? In Defence of Humanity’s Common Interests in Space. He talks to Alex Andreou about exploration, exploitation and trouble on the next frontier. Buy Who Owns the Moon? through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund The Bunker by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too. • “Nobody owns the Moon, which means everybody does. And if we all own it, we should all have a say in it. But in reality, very few people are having a say in it.” – A.C. Grayling • “The U.N. treaty, in declaring the Moon a no-man’s land, has provided us with nothing that would restrain any activity there. The treaty is not fit for purpose. We need a better one.” – A.C. Grayling • “Right now is the last time in history that you’d want to try and get everyone to sign an international treaty for the moon.” – A.C. Grayling www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Alex Andreou. Producer: Eliza Davis Beard. Audio editor: Simon Williams. Managing editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Music by Kenny Dickinson and artwork by James Parrett. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Instagram | Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:17.0	humanity's self-management has to improve is, to put it bluntly, by growing up. It is an existential matter. Those are the words of my guest today.
1:26.3	The eminent philosopher, author and academic whose latest book is framed by a question that might seem unpressing and esoteric, but turns out to be precisely
1:36.7	the reverse, urgent and vital. And that question is, who owns the moon? Welcome to the bunker, Professor A.C. Graling.
1:45.0	Thank you, Alex. Great pleasure to be with you.
1:48.0	Anthony, it may seem glib to begin without central question, but I must because in many ways the book is about the problems created by the answer so who owns the moon?
2:01.8	Nobody does which means everybody does.
2:05.0	That's part of the nub of this problem.
2:08.6	If we all own it, then we all have an interest in it, and we should therefore also all have a say in it and we should therefore all have a say in it and very, very few people are having a say in it.
2:17.6	In order to glean what that might be a problem, you draw several historical parallels not as directly
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