Oxidant

If we raise vertically a line along the geo-political borders of our country to the end of the atmosphere, is the oxygen contained owned by our country?

That's what we do with natural resources that are in the ground, so I think the same concept can be applied upwards.

Still, the real resource is not the Oxygen (O2) itself, while it's more the balance between it and the carbon dioxide (CO2).

If country A produces a lot of oxygen which crosses the border with country B we can still assume it's A's fault if they cannot look after their belongings.

We, from B, will freely use all the oxygen contained in our borders, period.

But what happens with the carbon dioxide that B dumps into A's borders?

Yeah, it's an old story, several global meetings, decisions, protocols were established to try to bring back the balance O2/CO2 to the correct values.

Why, if we can apply economy's laws to oil, we cannot apply them to the O2/CO2 balance, simply considering it a resource?

Does it really make sense to ask country B to "promise" they will reduce CO2 emissions?

Wouldn't it be easier that countries that produce this resource would sell it to those that use it?

Satellites, with IR imagery can calculate quite precisely how much CO2 and O2 are produced by all the countries.

Setting up a balance should be trivial.

Country A, which is probably more "rural" and with less industries than B, would benefit from maintaining its trees instead of destroying them to plant production facilities for cheap goods.

And overall the world would benefit from that too as maintaining a good balance between O2/CO2 is a common interest.

So, why isn't that happening?

Funny enough we play the "kind guys" with some of those countries that produce O2, after we steal their resources we send them "aids", meaning we lend them money usually for a very high interest rate or we give them "help" of some kind, provided they buy our weapons, medicines etc... 

We cannot even play by our own rules.