Peter Brabeck, CEO of the world's largest foodstuff company, Nestle, has begun plans to privatize the air we breathe within municipal borders across the globe.
Nestle's idea is to make air a quantifiable commodity sold on the open market. The company would then contract with municipal leaders (from New York to New Zealand) to be the principal supplier of the air we breathe. Meaning: if New Yorkers wanted to breathe the air around them within the city's limits, they would need to pay Nestle in order to do so.
This news comes on the heels of Brabeck's announcement that he considers fresh water to be a commodity that should be wholly privatized rather than a human necessity to which global citizens have a right to unfettered access:
According to Brabeck, access to water is not a human right, and those who purport such claims are extremists.
Now, Nestle's CEO is categorizing the air we breathe as a commodity as well. "Those on the left backed by NGOs will say that access to air is a human right," Braback said when reached for comment. "However, oxygen is just like anything else. It's a commodity. People want it. And a market value should ascribed to it."
When asked whether making air a commodity could potentially leave millions (or billions) of poor global citizens out in the cold, Braback rejected such thoughts as fear-mongering. "Once we know what air is worth, we'll know how large the subsidies need to be to keep poor people breathing."
When asked to comment, poor people across the globe refused to waste their last free breaths on an answer.