- Utah lawmakers rejected a bill targeting "chemtrails" for the second year.
- Sen. Ron Winterton's bill, SB23, was voted down 2-4 on Thursday.
- The bill proposed criminalizing solar geoengineering despite lack of scientific support.
SALT LAKE CITY – For the second year in a row, a bill based on a conspiracy theory about "chemtrails" in Utah skies has failed to get to the finish line.
SB23, sponsored by Sen. Ron Winterton, R-Roosevelt, was voted down by the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee on Thursday in a 2-4 vote.
Chemtrails refer to a decades-old, unsubstantiated theory that the white streaks behind airplanes in the sky are harmful or nefarious chemicals. In reality, those streaks known as condensation trails (or "contrails") occur when hot exhaust from aircraft mixes with cold air, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Still, Winterton argued Thursday that the haze that lingers in the air from airplane emissions is suspicious, and the state needs to "get control of what is being sprayed in our atmosphere."
His bill would make it a third-degree felony for an aircraft owner or operator to engage in solar geoengineering, meaning the modification of the atmosphere by releasing chemicals "to artificially reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's lower atmosphere or surface."
Suspected violations would need to be reported to the Utah Attorney General's Office, according to the bill, and could be punishable by prison time and a $100,000 fine.
"We are probably the experimental lab rats on this to see does it affect us or not," Winterton said. "And as you look at some of those chemicals, yes, they are harmful to our health, and so we should be able to get out in front of this."
Winterton did not specify which chemicals he believed were being sprayed in Utah. He also noted that cloud seeding – which can help boost precipitation – would not be prohibited under his bill.
Representatives of the Eagle Forum and Utah Legislative Watch, both conservative groups, urged support for the bill. No one from the public spoke in opposition, but four lawmakers – one Republican, two Democrats, and one Forward Party member – voted against it.
Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, argued that the proposal did not line up with established science.
"I would disagree that this fits in with peer-reviewed studies, studies published in a refereed journal, that sort of thing," Blouin said.
White streaks from aircraft, the EPA says, are formed "for the same reason that you can see the exhaust from your vehicle or your own breath on a cold day. The federal government is not aware of there ever being a contrail intentionally formed over the United States for the purpose of geoengineering/weather modification."
The Associated Press reported multiple states have introduced similar bills targeting chemtrails as they take "inspiration from a wide-ranging conspiratorial narrative, mixing it with facts, to create legislation."
A similar measure last year, also sponsored by Winterton, passed the Utah Senate but died in the House of Representatives before the session ended.
