Delusions are getting crafted into legislation that’s designed to obscure the reality of climate change
For years, outlandish theories about the U.S. government using airplanes to spray harmful chemicals over U.S. homes or powerful elites controlling the weather were relegated to the fringes of society.
As the internet has provided rocket fuel for such claims, Republican lawmakers across the country are introducing, passing and enacting laws to ban “weather modification” and environmental geoengineering and allude to the use of “chemtrails,” a longtime theory that planes are spreading chemical agents on an unsuspecting public. As more people are exposed to dangerous flooding, the GOP lawmakers have pointed to the fringe theories as potential explanations for extreme weather, pushing them further into the political mainstream. (Scientists have found evidence tying the increasing frequency of extreme weather to climate change.)
Republican lawmakers in nearly 20 state legislatures have proposed such legislation, with governors in Tennessee and Florida having signed bills into law. On the federal level, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., recently introduced the “Clear Skies Act,” which would outlaw forms of geoengineering and hit alleged weather modifiers with penalties of up to $100,000 for each violation and potential prison sentences of up to five years.
“It’s not a conspiracy theory,” Pennsylvania state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, a Republican who co-sponsored legislation in her state, said in an interview. “All you have to do is look up.”
At its core, the legislative push seeks to outlaw human-made alterations to the climate — notable, given how the party has fought to stop efforts to combat climate change tied to fossil fuel consumption and as the Trump administration has cut funding for climate change research and removed the website that hosted the government’s climate assessments.
“One political party in this country seems especially concerned about the idea of theoretical changes in the weather,” Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for the Washington Post and other outlets, told NBC News. “Whereas that same political party will largely turn a blind eye to actual weather modification that is happening in slow motion, i.e., human-induced climate change.” [Continue reading…]