Tennessee Bans Geoengineering, & Other Tales From The Far Right

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Last spring, the great state of Tennessee passed legislation outlawing geoengineering, specifically spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to block some of the radiation from the sun. As climate change drives up temperatures on Earth, there is growing interest in geoengineering as a way to cool the planet, but it is still largely theoretical, with no evidence that anyone in Tennessee is planning to try it. The Tennessee legislature is controlled by rabid, foaming at the mouth right wing extremists.

According to the New York Times, the main witness to testify in support of the ban was a physician without any apparent qualifications in atmospheric science, who falsely claimed geoengineering was happening nationwide. Such deliberate ignorance of the facts is emblematic of the lunatics and losers loyal to a disgraced former president, so it was no big surprise when the bill banning geoengineering sailed through the legislature and Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, signed it.

The bill was the result of lobbying by activists known in Republican circles from their efforts fighting vaccine mandates. “We used the connections and the rapport that we had built over the last couple of years in medical freedom,” Danielle Goodrich of East Tennessee Freedom, which calls itself a “group of Patriots, Momma Bears, Conservative Christians,” explained on a podcast.

Geoengineering Is Serious Business

For years, the debate over geoengineering has mostly been limited to academics and environmentalists. They agree that climate change is an existential threat, but differ about whether humans should look at trying to blunt it by manipulating natural processes. Some, including geophysicist David Keith, say geoengineering could save lives. He believes outdoor experiments are necessary to understand the benefits and risks associated with altering the atmosphere. Others, including the nonprofit Friends of the Earth, say geoengineering distracts from the urgent need to cut the pollution that is heating the planet and are concerned about a lack of international rules to ensure that it’s deployed safely and fairly.

Now, those critics have been joined by groups from a very different corner of American society — vaccine skeptics, conspiracy theorists, and organizations like East Tennessee Freedom — which appear to be motivated by a deep distrust of government rather than by what Danielle Goodrich called the “supposed climate crisis.” These new geoengineering opponents are finding support from hard-right Republicans. Since January, lawmakers in more than a half dozen other states have introduced similar legislation to preemptively ban geoengineering.

“The politics of geoengineering is really weird,” Benjamin Day, a senior campaigner on the Climate & Energy Justice team at Friends of the Earth, told the New York Times. He said it was odd to share a goal with groups which seem to be trying to discredit the government and exhibit what he called a “detachment from the truth.” The fear and misinformation around geoengineering was on display earlier this year in Alameda, California, where scientists sprayed water vapor mixed with sea salts into the atmosphere a short distance off the coast. They were testing a device that might someday be used to brighten clouds to reflect sunlight back into space. The Alameda experiment was harmless; the scientists just wanted to observe how the particles moved through the air. But residents were so worried, they convinced the City Council to shut the project down, even though the city said the experiment posed no danger to public health or the environment.

Researchers argue that a ban on geoengineering that includes preliminary experiments would hamstring science. A British science agency said this month that it would provide $75 million to test geoengineering technologies, including outdoor experiments, because without physical tests “there is no prospect of being able to make proper judgments” about whether geoengineering is feasible and safe. “As pressure grows to geoengineer the planet, we damn well better have the science to understand as well as we can what the benefits might be and what the downsides might be, before decisions are made,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, which has committed millions of dollars to fund geoengineering research.

A Project That Started In 2014

The national campaign to ban geoengineering can be traced back to Rhode Island in 2014, when a lawmaker looked to the sky and saw a conspiracy. Karen MacBeth, a state representative and educator, introduced a bill that would fine or imprison anyone who knowingly engaged in geoengineering within Rhode Island, arguing it could damage soil, water, and air quality. She believes she was the first state lawmaker in the country to propose such a ban. The text of Ms. MacBeth’s bill listed what it said were geoengineering’s potential harmful side effects, including changes in precipitation patterns, increased acid rain, harm to the Earth’s ozone layer and less effective solar panels.

In an interview, MacBeth, who left office in 2017, attributed her concern about geoengineering to something not mentioned in her bill — she believed that someone was already using airplanes to deliberately emit chemicals into the air. “As a child, you would look up and see these big clouds and bright blue skies,” Ms. MacBeth said. “And then all of a sudden, I started to see these streaks coming from planes that didn’t disappear.” She worried the streaks came from a harmful substance. “It’s now happening worldwide,” she added.

MacBeth’s beliefs are better known as the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory, which posits that airplanes are secretly emitting dangerous chemical trails, as opposed to water vapor naturally released as condensation from planes’ engines. That water vapor turns to visible trails of ice crystals in the cold air. There is no evidence supporting the chemtrails theory, which has attracted many followers through social media. “Some people say it’s the local government, or the United States. Other people say there’s a secret world organization behind it,” said Sijia Xiao, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, who wrote a peer-reviewed paper about the conspiracy theory. “Some people say it’s for poisoning the population. Some people say it’s for modifying the weather.”

The campaign against geoengineering got a boost in June 2023, when the White House, directed by Congress, released a federal research agenda for solar geoengineering. The Biden administration made clear that federal research into geoengineering remains limited. But the report said outdoor experiments, combined with computer models and lab studies, could be valuable. That was enough to flood X, formerly Twitter, with derisive posts and to provoke headlines in conservative media like “White House Report Signals Openness to Manipulating Sunlight to Prevent Climate Change.” Since January, Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to ban geoengineering in New Hampshire, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Dakota, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Most of those bills resemble the legislation introduced in Rhode Island.

Geoengineering & Conspiracy Theorists

Many of the activists and lawmakers who want to ban geoengineering display a libertarian streak. Jason Gerhard, a state lawmaker who sponsored a bill to ban geoengineering in New Hampshire, says the federal income tax is applied too broadly. He served 12 years in prison after being convicted of supplying weapons to a couple involved in a standoff with federal marshals over unpaid taxes. He ran for sheriff this year in Merrimack County, NH, promising to investigate geoengineering. “People are tired of the intentional polluting of our skies. No more geoengineering!” Mr. Gerhard wrote on X.

Doug Mastriano, the Republican Pennsylvania state senator who lost his bid for governor in 2022 despite an endorsement from a disgraced former president, introduced a bill to ban geoengineering in his state in June. Mr. Mastriano, a Christian nationalist and subscriber to QAnon conspiracy theories, said in a news release that “the potential for irreparable harm to life and property resulting from solar geoengineering justifies an outright ban.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ended an independent bid for the White House last month, has also voiced concerns about geoengineering, saying in a statement that it can have “serious unforeseen ecological consequences.” During an episode of his podcast last year called “Are Chemtrails Real?,” Kennedy said the issue of climate change had been “hijacked” by the World Economic Forum and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. “They’re doing the same thing to us that the pharmaceutical industry does, which is they aggravate the problem, and then sell us the solution,” Mr. Kennedy said. “And of course the solution that they want for climate are more social controls, and then the big solution of geoengineering projects — which of course Bill Gates is funding all over the world.” And here we thought George Soros was behind all this!

No Common Sense In East Tennessee

So far, only Tennessee has succumbed to the hysteria and madness of the anti-geoengineering mob. The witness who testified most often in support of the ban was Denise Sibley, an internist in Johnson City, Tennessee, and a founder of the group that became East Tennessee Freedom. She told lawmakers that geoengineering was happening across the country, citing the White House report as evidence. For her efforts, she was praised by Republicans. “I do appreciate your coming to us with this,” said Janice Bowling, a state senator. “I have been hearing about this from constituents for quite a time, and the fact that it is taking place over Tennessee.” Frank Niceley, another Republican lawmaker, said “this will be my wife’s favorite bill of the year. She has been worried about this, I bet 10 years. It’s been going on a long, long time.”

The Tennessee ban prohibits the “intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of the state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or intensity of the sunlight.” That would include cloud seeding, a decades-old practice in which chemicals are injected into clouds to trigger precipitation. Augustus Doricko, chief executive of a cloud seeding company, testified that the legislation would prevent farmers from using a common tool. “If you’re in favor of depriving farmers in Tennessee from having the best technology available in other states, I would ask you to vote for the bill as it is,” Mr. Doricko told lawmakers.

Lobbying for the bill’s passage was Danielle Goodrich, the anti-vaccine activist, who described a nationwide anti-geoengineering campaign on a podcast called “Rebunked.” She said that geoengineering amounted to government overreach, similar to vaccine mandates. “They’re experimenting on us without our consent. We went from being dirty germ emitters during Covid, to now we’re dirty carbon emitters. And you know, both of these things are false, and they’re looking to infringe on our rights.”

Goodrich said East Tennessee Freedom got model legislation from a woman named Jolie Diane who runs a website called Zero Geoengineering. “Jolie is an amazing wealth of information,” Goodrich told the New York Times, and credited Diane for getting bans introduced in New Hampshire, Kentucky, and South Dakota, among other places. On her Zero Geoengineering website, Diane warns against other perceived threats, including vaccine mandates, fifth generation wireless connectivity, and genetically modified crops.

Diane’s efforts to ban geoengineering around the country appear to date from at least 2018, when she gave a presentation at a Rhode Island library. In a recording of that presentation, Ms. Diane said that chemicals were being sprayed by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the deep state. “We’re using this bill as a model and a template when we go to different states,” she said at the event. “We adapt it for the different states, to make it specific. And now they have hope too.”

The Takeaway

Where to begin with this story? CleanTechnica has reported often on goeengineering, specifically the many dangers associated with the process. But our articles on the subject are based on science, not some cockamamie concoctions by someone who admits to dumping a dead bear in Central Park or cutting the head off a dead whale. There are legitimate risks associated with mucking about with the climate. For one thing, the results of doing so are unknown and unknowable, but it is a global problem, not one that should be handled by local legislatures who cannot be bothered to ask any recognized scientists to provide input that could lead to an intelligent decision. Making policy based on some knee-jerk conspiracy theory nonsense is frankly just plain stupid.

The only geoengineering anyone should be doing is breaking the global economy of its dependency on the drug of fossil fuels. That’s where we should start, and save the more extreme measures like geoengineering for later to be used only in an emergency. But of course the conspiracy theory nutcases are in love with fossil fuels and would never lift a finger to reduce their use. To them, climate change from burning coal, oil, and methane isn’t real. If the climate is changing, it is because of nefarious activities by governments.

It is disappointing when serious issues become ensnared in the machinations of unserious people. They want to ban abortion, birth control, gay and transgender people, voting rights for non-whites, and pillory immigrants for eating cats, but their spines turn to jello if anyone suggests banning assault rifles that can pump a hundred bullets a minute into the bodies of innocent school children. They address government overreach by banning everything under the sun (no pun intended) that violates their world view. This is the kind of hysterical thinking that got “witches” burned at the stake in Salem, Massachusetts, 300 years ago. It is scary to think these anti-government lunatics want to actually become the government so they can force others to think the way they do. Such unhinged lunacy is a greater threat to the continued existence of humans than climate change itself.