Lawmakers in the state of Tennessee passed a law this week that forbids the geoengineering techniques such as cloud seeding — the injection of airborne chemicals into the atmosphere. Other states including Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Minnesota and New Hampshire, have made moves to usher in similar legislation. The Republican-sponsored bill would make the “intentional injection, release, or dispersion" of chemicals into the air illegal, prohibiting all technology that “affects temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight.”Monty Fritts, who sponsored the legislation, called it "a very common-sense thing to do,” and pointed particularly at the issue of cloud seeding, which is the process of infusing chemicals into cloud particles. These chemicals or “nanoparticles” are made up of materials such as silver iodine, and are designed to change naturally occurring weather patterns such as rain or hail."Everything that goes up must come down, and those chemicals that we knowingly and willingly inject into the atmosphere simply to control the weather or the climate are affecting our health," said Fritts. After the bill passed along party lines Monday, the next step is for Tennessee's governor, Republican Bill Lee, to sign off on it. The new law is set to go into effect July 1. The legislation comes after a 2023 report on solar geoengineering, which according to the UN Environment Programme, is a “technology designed to cool the planet,” with one of its chief methods being stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI).SAI “involves injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, so a small amount of sunlight is deliberately reflected into space to cool the planet,” per the UN. President Joe Biden's administration denies there are plans “to establish a comprehensive research programme focused on solar radiation modification,” the BBC reported. Several officials testified at the Tennessee legislature the idea of secret cloud seeding was a baseless conspiracy theory, with environmental conservation director at Sierra Club Scott Banbury calling these claims “troubling.” “As a serious environmental organization, if what was in the bill was actually going on we would be calling for a stop to it," he said."It's not happening."However, despite the president’s claims and conservationist’s denial, Canada and the US jointly signed the Weather Modification Information Act in 1985, which allows solar geoengineering and cloud seeding as long as it is disclosed with the neighbouring country. This kind of weather modification has been underway in both countries since long before that, with the design for the technology dating back to 1946. For example, a North Dakota-based company called Weather Modification Inc. has been using climate engineering techniques such as cloud seeding above Calgary. A spokesperson from the Environment and Climate Change Canada confirmed it was “undertaking weather modification activities in Canada, in the form of cloud seeding to reduce hail damage."
