Tennessee: Bill Banning Geoengineering In The State Passes, Critics Say It’s A Conspiracy Theory

OAN’s Brooke Mallory
4:26 PM – Friday, March 22, 2024

The Tennessee legislature will approve a law that would make it illegal for anyone to utilize atmospheric dispersal within the state’s boundaries in order to mitigate climate change.

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The “intentional injection, release, or dispersion” of “chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus” within Tennessee for the “express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight,” or the practice known as geoengineering, would be prohibited by the bill, which is sponsored by Representative Monty Fritts (R-Kingston) and Senator Steve Southerland (R-Morristown).

Fritts asserted that attempts to “manage climate change” and “solar impact” through chemical compounds were “widely documented,” and he aimed to shield Tennessee’s air and water from the inadvertent effects of those endeavors.

“We just felt like that was a good place to drive the stake in the ground—not in Tennessee—we’re not going to do this,” Fritts said during a House subcommittee.

Fritts continued, explaining that he drafted the legislation in consultation with TDEC members to ensure that it would not conflict with “legitimate industry within this state.”

However, Nashville Representative Justin Jones (D-Tenn.) rejected the bill, claiming that most of the information supporting Fritts’ bill was “based on conspiracy theories.”

A White House study from June 2023 outlining possible measures to modify solar radiation was said to be the source of concern. The Biden Administration emphasized that while the study describes planning and research to examine ways to lower solar radiation “in an attempt to fight climate change,” it purportedly does not include or suggest any changes to present policy or the practice of geoengineering. The report states that it was made public in compliance with a congressional directive.

On March 18^th, the Senate passed the legislation on a party-line vote without any debate on the Senate floor. Additionally, the Capitol website states that the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee will consider the measure on Wednesday, March 27^th.

In 2012, conservative radio show host Alex Jones featured a man named Ben Livingston on his program “Prison Planet” which is connected to Jones’ controversial website InfoWars. Livingston spoke on the topic further.

In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, Livingston, who claimed to be a weather modification expert and a former Navy physicist, allegedly briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson on the efficacy of weather control. Livingston went on to claim that he was involved in cloud-seeding programs that worked to impede the advances of Vietnamese and Korean troops. According to Livingston, the government made storm management a national priority more than 40 years ago, and at that time, the technology was completely functional for controlling the weather.

Meanwhile, detractors like Alan Robock, a climate science professor at Rutgers University, claim that chemtrails do not exist and that the noticeable white streaks that many people across the U.S. notice in the sky for long periods of time are simply contrails.

“Contrails are short-lived cloud effects—less than a few days,” Fahey told USA TODAY. “They would be a very inefficient method [at combating climate change].”

“The technology does not exist,” Robock continued. “There is no mechanism to get sulfur gases into the stratosphere. People have created designs for such airplanes, but they have not been built.”

Nevertheless, social media users on X (Twitter) posted videos of what they maintained was their own “proof” of chemtrails on the platform.