Legislation targeting baseless concept to keep state’s skies clear essentially futile given politicians cannot control sky and wind

The “chemtrails” conspiracy theory is enjoying its moment in the clearly visible, not blocked by government-released toxic chemicals, sun, after the Tennessee state senate passed a bill this month targeting the baseless concept.

Legislation banning the “intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances” swept through the Republican-dominated senate, and will now be considered by the Republican-dominated house, before then being weighed by Tennessee’s Republican governor. There is also a movement to pass a similar law in Pennsylvania.

The Tennessee bill, introduced in the senate by Republican Steve Southerland, does not use the term “chemtrails”. The language in the bill, however – there is talk of the government “intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere” – directly evokes a decades-old conspiracy theory.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Wait, can CO2 be considered a chemical? Did Tennessee Republicans just pass something to stop global warming? Are they now going after cow farts?

  • minnow@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Because there couldn’t be any legitimate reason to do the things they’re banning, like cloud seeding, crop dusting, air dropping seeds for reforesting, I dunno, literally releasing anything as you fly over even like CO2 exhaust as mentioned by the other commentor.

    Literally all matter is a chemical, chemical compound, or substance. IMO this law is going to be struck down super fast just for being overly broad. Not that that would stop Republicans from passing it and spending millions of dollars in public money defending it in court.

    • FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Fucking fuck that Operation Seaspray is all kinds of fucked up.

      And people wonder why we have COVID 5G tower conspiracy theorists today…

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        That’s the best documented one they have the name of but there’s a more complete list that came out with the church committee with almost 300 different incidents of the navy and army spraying biological weapons in different cities all around the states and I believe dropping them from the air also. Not exactly chemtrails but not exactly not chemtrails.

  • ObiWahn@feddit.de
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    7 months ago

    So… I haven’t read the bill, but would that mean that flying, emergancy landings, driving and breathing would be illegal?!

    I mean flying, driving and breathing produces CO2 and to do an emergency landing you have to dump fuel…

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Not that I believe in chemtrails, but if they were a thing, a law saying “you can’t fly your jets over our state’s airspace” is not especially enforceable. And considering the chemtrail conspiracy theorists think they’re on every commercial aircraft, I guess Tennessee will have to close all of its airports.

  • PhineaZ@feddit.de
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    7 months ago

    So I haven’t read the actual bill and I dearly hope they considered this: A law banning the intentional dispersion of chemicals would ban uhm … well … everything?