( WP ) Aliens have a patent on oxygen and have come to collect payment .

The revelation that we are not alone in this universe was followed immediately by even more frightening news: Earth was in boatloads of debt to our newly-discovered alien neighbors. And we'd keep accruing that debt if we want to keep breathing. Who knew there was an intergalactic patent on oxygen? Specifically, the dioxygen in our atmosphere that appeared in abundance around 2.3 billion years ago. And you know who seeded the cyanobacteria that would eventually produce it? Guess what, aliens. Turns out the third kind are a bunch of scheming swindlers. They set us up to evolve in an environment where we'd be using that sweet Oh-two. We were all ready to get up Iin arms over the injustice of it ( though our technologically inferior resistance would have been laughable ) until we heard what they wanted. 
 
 Carbon dioxide. 
 
 Nope, you heard me right. Earth in a tizzy over global warming and they can fix our problem then and there. Hilarious. No, no, I know what you're going to say: that there's carbon dioxide elsewhere, so why do they want ours? I hear you. I mean, dioxygen patent aside, why not go for Venus or Mars - they've got atmospheres over 95 % carbon dioxide. But you know why the aliens do n't go for those? 
 
 Red tape. 
 
 You got it, *bureaucracy*. Apparently it takes ages to get permits for resource extraction ( carbon dioxide or otherwise ) from an uninhabited planet. But legal patent proceedings with a sentient species? Easy as cake. And even more absurdly, `` naturally produced'' CO2 is in vogue right now, so this arrangement is more profitable for them than synthesizing the stuff themselves. 
 
 So now we're all set up in a bizarre and ( for now ) mutually beneficial agreement with the aliens: if we go over a certain parts-per-million concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, they skim it off and replace it with oxygen ( which is generously royalty-free ), nitrogen, and a tiny pinch of argon, to mimic what's our air is naturally composed of besides carbon dioxide. It scares a lot of scientists who are looking at long-term impact of forcibly changing Earth's atmospheric composition like that, and frankly it scares me too. But was the only thing we could do. We're working on getting the official property rights to Mars and Venus so we can eventually use them instead. 
 
 With the way the aliens describe the intergalactic legal system it sure wo n't be in my lifetime. Funny ol' world, innit? Funny ol' universe. 

