Amid shrinking carbon budgets and accelerating climate shocks, the prospect of deploying carbon removal or geoengineering technologies is surfacing new societal tensions and political resistance in the United States. Carbon removal technologies—such as carbon capture from flue source and direct air capture1—have drawn political pushback from both ends of the U.S. political spectrum. Meanwhile, geoengineering interventions—such as cloud seeding and stratospheric aerosol injection2—are regarded as controversial processes. In theory, these geoengineering strategies reflect radiation from the sun, allowing the planet to cool and, as proponents argue, providing time to decarbonize and prevent the worst climatological feedback loops from accelerating. Across the United States, opposition to these interventions is emerging as a potent, cross-cutting force in climate politics, uniting unlikely coalitions of far-right populists and environmental traditionalists against an increasingly less-relevant technocratic center. These horizon climate technologies have triggered online mobilization, localized demonstrations, and state-level bans from activist politicians. All of this suggests a politically volatile terrain.
This article explores this new frontier for climate activism in the United States. It analyzes how early political backlash is unfolding, creating vacuums for domestic mistrust, and potentially influencing policy for both geoengineering interventions and carbon dioxide removal (albeit, in varying degrees). The first section overviews carbon removal’s fraught historical advancement to market and the present-day social and political backlash it has triggered. The second section outlines the trajectory of geoengineering, from its roots in militarization to its foundational place of opposition in conventional environmental camps and new, right-wing populist groups. From there, it examines the preemptive impacts that geoengineering has had on local politics (and perhaps how they could permeate on the federal level). Lastly, the article zooms out and offers a comparative look into how the politics and policies of other jurisdictions have emerged regarding these contentious climate technologies.
Capturing Carbon
Carbon capture technologies have been deployed for decades, albeit with limited economic and technical success thus far. Capturing carbon from the earth’s atmosphere was, importantly, designed to maximize oil production—not abate global carbon emissions. In the 1960s, U.S. and Canadian energy companies began experimenting with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that injects CO₂ into the subsurface to stimulate the flow of crude oil. But by the new millennium, the potential for carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) spread to other hydrocarbon-related projects including natural gas purification in Norway and a coal-based synthetic fuel plant in the United States. Monitored by an International Energy Agency–backed consortium, an EOR facility in Canada was validated, further strengthening the notion that carbon capture could be part of a decarbonization pathway.3
At this moment in modern history, the first global climate discussions were underway—starting with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol—and only a few clean energy alternatives were on the horizon: The nuclear age had screeched to a halt thanks in no small part to the disaster at Chernobyl and the rise of cheap natural gas.4 Wind and solar power were niche and prohibitively costly solutions that were still primarily being manufactured in the developed nations, not China (which would later yield resounding cost curves thanks to Chinese labor costs and innovation).5 Much of the developed world’s hydropower resources were well established, leaving developed countries with few additional low-hanging fruit for expansion.6 Alongside the faulty promise of biofuels, carbon capture was viewed as a potential solution to decarbonization that would not rattle incumbents and respective labor markets. By 2008, the 45Q tax credit was introduced in the United States to help subsidize carbon capture (and the credit was expanded and altered in the following years).7
But by the 2010s, carbon capture projects in the United States began to experience economic challenges—and with them, varying degrees of backlash. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched the FutureGen clean coal project, but after repeated cost overruns and redesigns—including a short-lived revival with $1 billion pledged in funding as FutureGen 2.0—the effort was finally abandoned in 2015 without a plant ever being built.8 Several years later, a similar state-backed project in Mississippi also failed, and analysis from the Government Accountability Office found that about half of the $2.66 billion in innovation funding for carbon capture had been lost to unsuccessful developments.9 Despite these setbacks, a 2018 tax law under the first Donald Trump administration helped expand carbon capture subsidies. At the same time, advocacy groups led by youth movements were increasingly skeptical of carbon capture technology used alongside fossil fuel production. (By this time, renewables had neared cost parity with fossil fuels in power markets, by and large, surpassing all economic expectations.) 10
These dynamics intensified during U.S. president Joe Biden’s administration. To start, the administration’s goals of a big tent, ambitious climate policy based on the progressive vision of a Green New Deal required bringing centrist Republicans and Democrats on board, which in turn entailed a broad, technological approach. But as early as 2020, progressive groups and eighteen progressive House of Representative members stood firm against CCUS as a solution—with many focusing on concerns about the impact that carbon capture pipelines would have on communities.11 An activist from Greenpeace specifically decried the expenditures as a “waste of money,” while Friends of the Earth and other activist groups argued it would further empower and embolden fossil fuel incumbents.12 These activist sentiments complicate a nuanced reality of carbon capture: Any serious net-zero forecasts envision enormous quantities of carbon removal, and yet much of the carbon capture plans may be driven by incumbents with the know-how to remove and store carbon dioxide.13 Carbon capture and removal will—for better or worse—have to be part of the solution. In the end, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included billions of dollars in carbon capture funding—in particular to direct air capture hubs to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. To further these developments, the 45Q carbon capture subsidy was again expanded in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.14
However, progress to develop large-scale carbon removal pipelines and infrastructure was triggering literal frontline resistance. The United States has experienced decades of anti–energy infrastructure activism—from the Earth First! movement’s protest against the Glen Canyon Dam to more recent pan-Indigenous solidarity against the Dakota Access Pipeline.15 In 2023, advocates in Illinois raised the alarm bell against the Heartland Greenway pipeline that would bring CO₂ from industrial plants across the Midwest to be stored in Illinois.16 Many cited a 2020 incident where a CO₂ pipeline leaked in Mississippi, causing adverse health impacts to local residents.17 The firm developing the carbon pipeline filed 232 lawsuits—including 156 eminent domain cases in South Dakota—to secure the land for its proposed 2,500-mile CO₂ pipeline, which would cross five Midwestern states.18 That litigation strategy triggered local opposition, which helped drive the passage of a South Dakota law banning the use of eminent domain for CO₂ pipelines and contributed to the Public Utilities Commission’s decision to deny the project’s permit in South Dakota in 2025.19 In 2024, a Louisiana-based CO₂ pipeline also began to leak, prompting safety concerns around the state.20 By this time, Indigenous groups and environmental justice organizations had begun organizing against CO₂ pipelines or advocating for better standards.21
The new political right has also become an increasingly vocal political force decrying carbon capture technology. In Iowa, a rally of over one hundred people—including many in Make America Great Again (MAGA) attire—came out to the Iowa Capitol to protest the Midwest CO₂ pipeline. With signs that read “People Over Pipelines” and “No Deadly Carbon Pipelines,” the crowd was accompanied by Republican lawmakers and then presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.22 This emerging, bipartisan resentment had been growing in Iowa since 2022 when the CO₂ pipeline gathered opposition from a strange coalition of traditional environmentalists, farmers, and evangelical Republicans. In one case, a conservative Christian farmer told POLITICO that only God controls the weather, “not the carbon dioxide.”23 In ethos, there are increasing parallels to the anti-geoengineering politics mentioned in the following section, where both the traditional left and new right have begun to confront these frontier technologies with greater mistrust and antagonism (although often for different reasons).
Recently, segments of the Republican Party have echoed this skepticism toward carbon capture. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently referred to carbon capture as a “scam” and described the GOP-led state legislature’s carbon sequestration task force as “embarrassing” and part of “climate ideology.”24 Several House Republicans advocated ending carbon capture subsidies altogether to ensure a total blow to Biden-era green industrial policy.25 The Trump administration has also cancelled $3.7 billion in decarbonization funding (among many others), which specifically bolstered carbon capture in the industrial sector.26 These dynamics are not an accident, nor are they a reaction to frontline Republican communities’ response to CO₂ pipelines. They are a direct result of an emerging view of climate change from the American right: The storm is coming, but its winds are overstated. Fossil fuels are essential because they bring wealth and prosperity. In this view, fossil fuel externalities are worth the risk of planetary disruption.27
In the end, the second Trump administration and Republican Party have landed in support of carbon capture subsidies. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which repealed vast elements of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, kept the carbon capture provisions intact.28 The Trump administration has not formally canceled the $3.5 billion direct air capture hubs program, but mass layoffs at DOE and a freeze on funds have left the department stalled in limbo. With oversight staff being gutted and communications embargoed, projects face uncertainty, delays, or even potential collapse despite bipartisan and industry support.29
Controlling the Clouds
Technologically, geoengineering is a product of the post–world war era and traces its roots to American corporate and military endeavors. Speculation of the potential to alter the weather dates to the 1830s when an American meteorologist was hired by the U.S. Army to determine whether humans could stimulate the rain. These early studies were the building blocks for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s attempts to develop a “rain machine” through detonating balloons of explosives to remediate the drought of the 1890s. By the 1920s, the military had again begun looking into these methods as a means of displacing fog for tactical incursions.30 Despite the failures of these early attempts, they nonetheless reveal how geoengineering research has long been driven by military ambition.
After the Second World War, geoengineering as known today began in earnest. Scientists at General Electric tested the first cloud seeding experiments to induce rainfall.31 As the Cold War ensued, military strategists on both sides of the Arctic began to investigate how the weather could be weaponized. (Albeit not from aerosol spraying but from other techniques: The Soviets, for example, wanted to build massive dams that could alter the ocean current and Arctic Circle.)32 The United States took the lead on proto-geoengineering technology, first with Project Stormfury, which started in 1962 and sought to weaken hurricanes, and later with Operation Popeye, a 1972 Air Force operation that sought to increase rainfall in Vietnam to suppress the geographical movement of the Viet Cong.33 The public leaking of this second operation, along with Cold War concerns about geoengineering, triggered the United States and Russia to negotiate the first global framework on the militarization of weather, known as the Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD).34
Geoengineering in Climate Politics and Nativist Movements
By 2006, geoengineering had entered the climate change conversation. An article from Nobel laureate Paul J. Crutzen legitimized geoengineering in climate science discourse by suggesting that solar radiation management might be an important area to research if carbon emissions were not abated.35 Until recently, most geoengineering techniques related to reflecting solar radiation remained theoretical and were not actively deployed.36 In 2010, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity issued the first large-scale moratorium on geoengineering—which the United States did not ratify.37 Traditional environmental organizations opposed geoengineering as an unproven technology with ripple effects that could risk harming vulnerable communities and violating principles of informed consent.38 By this point, environmental consensus on the political left was beginning to form against geoengineering as a hubristic and unreliable moral hazard.
The political left has not centered on geoengineering, and most examples of backlash in typical left-leaning constituencies reflect more direct community disaffection rather than broader ideological opposition. After Harvard scientists sought to explore releasing calcium carbonate in the Swedish Arctic, the Indigenous Sámi people objected, prompting the researchers to withdraw.39 In 2022, a network of Alaska Native leaders hosted a protest against a California-based geoengineering experiment seeking to spray synthetic silica into the atmosphere. The project was paused indefinitely.40 More recently, the progressive city of Alameda, California, voted to block local geoengineering experiments after one broke ground without the awareness of local politicians.41
Outside of the climate movement, geoengineering rapidly became intertwined with so-called chemtrails theories (which claim that contrail emissions from airplanes are creating adverse human health effects).42 Although the lineage of the chemtrails theory can be traced back to an online essay on the early web, its popularity accelerated significantly in the 2010s, especially among independent voters.43 In 2010, a small anti-geoengineering protest emerged in San Diego at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.44 In 2013, a demonstration took place at Redding City Hall in California when activists raised posters reading “Chemtrails Kill!!” and warned of an international plot to use climate-altering chemicals to harm mental and physical well-being.45 Since these select events took place, much of the activism related to chemtrails and geoengineering has escalated online and not on the streets.46 While these offline protests have been isolated and small-scale, online movements can yield notable potency in civil society.
In the past several years, these concerns about chemtrails have reemerged, driven largely by a new political right. Amid the rise of populist movements, theories have connected chemtrails with internationalist organizations that purportedly seek to control the weather. And while there have been few observed solely-geoengineering-focused protests to date, the subject has come to the fore as a rallying cry across both the MAGA and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) coalitions. The mainstreaming of chemtrail theories is an indicator of an increasingly common political trend in the United States, where an issue once on the fringes now appeals to growing independent movements across political extremes.47 That said, these theories are finding a more fertile home in contemporary right-wing movements that fuse climate denial with anti-globalist rhetoric.
Now, for the first time, this anti-geoengineering ideology on the political right is directly influencing policy in the United States. Thus far, geoengineering has been outright banned by three states—Florida, Montana, and Tennessee—with similar bills now introduced across Kentucky, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas.48 In total, twenty-two states have some form of anti–solar intervention legislation in the pipeline.49 The bills have been entirely put forth by Republican officials emboldened by the notion that chemtrails exist and that they are connected to nascent, early-stage climate intervention tests. Most recently, legislation put forth in Congress—known as the CLEAR Skies Act—would ban all types of weather modification including cloud seeding and solar radiation modification.50 The bill marks the first notable legislative action against climate intervention.
Despite lonely cries to continue to investigate geoengineering as a long-term climate solution from a less and less powerful political center, the technological approach does not seem to have many supporters in U.S. politics. The new Republican Party is increasingly of the mindset that climate interventions are a nonstarter, in line with some of its more severe, once-fringe beliefs. The Democratic Party, although more muted on geoengineering, has cautiously indicated approval of researching geoengineering techniques but has fallen short of setting up any programs.51 The lack of political appetite for this technology puts the U.S. government in a predicament: American startups are actively beginning to test geoengineering practices regardless of potential regulatory headwinds.52 But without institutional understanding and smart regulations, the risks of deploying this sensitive technology remain unmitigated.
Future Intervention and Global Divergences
In the United States, geoengineering interventions and carbon capture are facing varying degrees of political and social backlash. But across the world, as summers get hotter, droughts grow more extreme, and pressure to decarbonize mounts, these technologies are not slowing down.
Interestingly, as the United States faces increasing tensions with its neighbors to the north and south, Canadian and Mexican politics have both reflected early stages of mistrust toward the geoengineering-related activities of American companies and the U.S. government. In Canada, anti-chemtrails advocates have been around for decades. Notable examples of prominent politicians divulging their support for these once-fringe ideas include the former premier of British Columbia filing information act requests to see if regional or federal governments were using chemtrails and, more recently, the premier of Alberta legitimizing the chemtrails theory by specifically suggesting the U.S. military was responsible.53 Similar transboundary issues of trust emerged in Mexico: When a private U.S. company launched unauthorized solar geoengineering experiments in Baja, Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources issued a formal statement banning solar geoengineering projects on Mexican territory.54
Across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, both Europe and China are developing policies and experiments with these technologies. Despite opposition from notable NGOs and scientific communities, the EU is studying the social, engineering, and climatological challenges posed by geoengineering.55 However, European scientists have not raced to endorse geoengineering and remain pessimistic about its potential to genuinely mitigate the worst impacts of climate change (in addition to the unforeseen, adverse effects it may have).56 The UK has taken a slightly more aggressive approach by funding at least 57 million pounds ($76 million) of small-scale geoengineering intervention pilots.57
China, by contrast, has been working diligently in this space for at least a decade. In 2015, the nation set an artificial rainfall target by 2020 to confront domestic water shortages.58 By 2020, the Chinese government announced it would be expanding its cloud seeding program fivefold to include new infrastructure, a weather modification system in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and preparing the nation for an advanced level of weather modification by 2035.59 This year, China has successfully tested drones spraying silver iodine that were able to stimulate rainfall.60
Both Europe and China are also developing ambitious policies and infrastructure for carbon capture and storage (CCUS). Despite some pushback from climate NGOs and economists, the EU has embedded CCUS in its Green Deal Industrial Plan, funding large demonstration hubs in the North Sea and setting regulatory frameworks to certify permanent CO₂ storage.61 The UK has taken a similarly aggressive approach, rolling out multibillion-pound support for CO₂ transport and storage networks such as the East Coast Cluster and HyNet.62 China, by contrast, has pursued CCUS mainly through its state-owned oil and coal giants. In its 14th Five-Year Plan, Beijing formally elevated CCUS as a national priority, targeting multiple industrial hubs for deployment, and in 2022 Sinopec launched what it called China’s largest CCUS project at the Shengli oil field.63 Some have even begun to speculate that the United States could, in the long term, lose its carbon capture industry advantage to China.64
Conclusion
The politics of climate intervention and carbon capture techniques in the United States reveal a deeper trend of decreasing trust in governance that extends beyond the conversation around the scientific merits or dangers of geoengineering and carbon capture. Both the new right and segments of the environmental left are converging in suspicion and hostility toward these frontier technologies—albeit for starkly different reasons. In some cases, genuine scientific reasons are prompting concern, while in others, unsubstantiated theories are driving backlash. While the U.S. outlook for carbon capture has muddled forward despite growing backlash, the political risks for geoengineering appear more severe. At present, these new politics have not yet interfered with developments—American oil majors are still developing CCUS, and startups are spraying chemicals into the air. But their futures could be precarious if current trends in this political climate persist.
Meanwhile, other powers may forge ahead—experimenting, regulating, and building the industrial capacities that could influence the future of climate management. Whether these interventions ultimately prove necessary or reckless, the United States could end up watching from the sidelines. In this vacuum, decisions about planetary-scale climate responses may shift to other actors, leaving America to reckon with the outcomes of choices it no longer has the power or institutional capacity to shape.
In this series of articles, Carnegie scholars and contributors are analyzing varieties of climate activism from around the world, focusing on the intensification of activity both from the protesters themselves and from the authorities and forces who are the objects of their discontent.
Read more from the series here:
- Why Climate Sabotage Remains an Unlikely Strategy
- The Growing Criminalization of Climate and Environmental Protests
- In Iraq and Yemen, Climate Activism Requires Both Defiance and Adaptation
- Women and Climate Activism in Morocco and Tunisia
- Backlash Against Carbon Pricing in Australia and Canada
- Confronting Backlash Against Europe’s Green Transition
- The Paradox in Southeast Asia’s Decarbonization Agenda
- Northeast India’s Environmental Movements Have Taken a Climate Edge
- For Arab Youth, Mass Mobilization Won’t Fight Climate Change
- Climate Activism Across Urban and Rural Divides in the Middle East
Notes
1For overviews of these technologies, see Howard Herzog and Aaron Krol, “Carbon Capture,” Climate Portal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accessed October 27, 2025, https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture; and “Direct Air Capture,” International Energy Agency, accessed October 27, 2025, https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage/direct-air-capture.
2For overviews of these technologies, see “Cloud Seeding Technology: Assessing Effectiveness and Other Challenges,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-25-107328, December 19, 2024, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107328; and “Stratospheric Aerosol Injection,” Geoengineering Monitor, accessed October 27, 2025, https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/technologies/stratospheric-aerosol-injection.
3Jinfeng Ma et al., “Carbon Capture and Storage: History and the Road Ahead,” Engineering 14 (March 2022), 5948, DOI 10.1016/j.eng.2021.11.024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359190723_Carbon_capture_and_storage_History_and_the_road_ahead.
4Jesse D. Jenkins, What’s Killing Nuclear Power in U.S. Electricity Markets? Drivers of Wholesale Price Declines at Nuclear Generators in the PJM Interconnection, CEEPR Working Paper 2018-001 (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 2018), https://ceepr.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2018-001.pdf.
5Yuki Matsumoto, Chloé Papazian, Jehan Sauvage, and Kazushi Uzawa, Government Support in the Solar and Wind Value Chains, OECD Trade Policy Paper No. 288 (OECD, January 2025), https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/01/government-support-in-the-solar-and-wind-value-chains_ce793ca0/d82881fd-en.pdf.
6International Energy Agency, “Technology Roadmap – Hydropower,” IEA, November 14, 2012, https://www.iea.org/reports/technology-roadmap-hydropower.
7Angela C. Jones and Ashley J. Lawson, “Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in the United States,” Congressional Research Service Report R44902, updated October 5 2022, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44902.
8Jeff Tollefson, “US Government Abandons Carbon‑Capture Demonstration,” Nature, February 5, 2015, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16868.
9U.S. Government Accountability Office, Advanced Fossil Energy: Information on DOE‑Provided Funding for Research and Development Projects Started from Fiscal Years 2010 through 2017, GAO‑18‑619, September 2018, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-619.pdf.
10Rachel Cohen, “Carbon‑Capture Opponents Have Described the Policy as One of Several ‘False Solutions’ to the Climate Crisis,” In These Times, 2018, https://inthesetimes.com/article/carbon-capture-ccus-scale-act-infrastructure-biden-climate-labor.
11Kate Aronoff, “Why the Squad Voted Against Pelosi’s Energy Bill,” The New Republic, September 25 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/159499/squad-voted-pelosis-energy-bill.
12Lesley Clark and Carlos Anchondo, “Biden and CCS: Plans, Politics, Pitfalls,” E&E News, March 22, 2021, https://www.eenews.net/articles/biden-and-ccs-plans-politics-pitfalls.
13Jennifer Layke, Joel Jaeger, Katie Pastor, Kelly Levin, and Tim Searchinger, “5 Things to Know About the IEA’s Roadmap to Net Zero by 2050,” World Resources Institute, May 21, 2021, https://www.wri.org/insights/5-things-know-about-ieas-roadmap-net-zero-2050.
14Boston Consulting Group, Executive Perspectives: US Inflation Reduction Act: Climate & Energy — Features and Potential Implications, August 16, 2022, https://media-publications.bcg.com/BCG-Executive-Perspectives-US-Inflation-Reduction-Act-16August2022.pdf.
15Kyle Whyte, “The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and U.S. Colonialism,” Red Ink: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, & Humanities 19, no.1 (Spring 2017), posted February 28, 2017 (last revised April 21, 2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2925513; and Sarah Ann Standing, “Earth First!’s ‘Crack the Dam’ and the Aesthetics of Ecoactivist Performance,” in Readings in Performance and Ecology, ed. Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 147–155, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137011695_13.
16Josh Funk, “Navigator CO2 Puts Carbon Pipeline on Hold after South Dakota Denial,” AP News, October 10, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/navigator-carbon-dioxide-pipeline-permits-route-dd9b53473b8e2eff699433af570c3d2d.
17Ben Singson, “Illinois Activists Protest Multi‑State Carbon Pipeline Project,” MyJournalCourier, June 15, 2022, https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Illinois-activists-protest-multi-state-carbon-17239059.php; and Jack Darin / Sierra Club Illinois, “We Need Stronger Safety Guardrails on CO₂ Pipelines,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 28, 2024, https://chicago.suntimes.com/other-views/2024/04/28/carbon-dioxide-co2-pipeline-capture-safety-guardrails-jack-darin-sierra-club-illinois.
18Eric Ferkenhoff and Josh Kelet, “Pipeline Company Filed Hundreds of Lawsuits Against Landowners over Carbon Capture Project,” AP News, April 9, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/summit-carbon-solutions-carbon-capture-pipeline-midwest-lawsuits-landowners-6c410dad59ce4d5d6de5ff4962dd0913.
19Sarah Raza, “South Dakota Panel Rejects Permit for an $8.9 Billion Carbon Capture Midwest Pipeline,” AP News, April 22, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/carbon-south-dakota-pipeline-route-permit-f6ba5287e24aebebcaf22f4cc8d75c9f.
20Tristan Baurick, “Latest Carbon Dioxide Leak Raises Concerns About Safety, Regulation,” Verite / LA Illuminator, May 1 2024, https://lailluminator.com/2024/05/01/carbon-dioxide-leak.
21Food & Water Watch, “California Organizations Urge Senate to Adopt Strong CO₂ Pipeline Standards,” Food & Water Watch, May 14, 2025, https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2025/05/14/california-organizations-urge-senate-to-adopt-strong-co2-pipeline-standards; and FracTracker Alliance, “Indigenous Communities Fight Against CO₂ Pipelines,” FracTracker, October 2024, https://www.fractracker.org/2024/10/indigenous-communities-fight-against-co2-pipelines.
22Kathie Obradovich, “Iowans Rally at State Capitol Against Eminent Domain for Carbon Pipelines,” Iowa Capital Dispatch, January 10, 2024, https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/01/10/iowans-rally-at-state-capitol-against-eminent-domain-for-carbon-pipelines.
23Tony Leys, “Iowa Senate Overrides Veto, OKs Carbon‑Capture Pipeline Deal,” POLITICO, May 29 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/29/iowa-manchin-carbon-capture-pipeline-00030361.
24Alex Nitzberg, “DeSantis Rebukes Republicans Backing Bill, Carbon Sequestration Task Force ‘Absolutely Embarrassing,’” Fox News, April 2, 2025, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-rebukes-republicans-backing-bill-carbon-sequestration-task-force-absolutely-embarrassing.
25Liz Caine, “House Republicans Call to End Carbon Capture Tax Credits amid Push for Clean Hydrogen,” Houston Chronicle, May 2024, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/article/republicans-carbon-stroage-clean-hydrogen-20310908.php.
26Alexa St. John, “Trump Administration Cancelled $3.7 B in Clean‑Energy Funds, Including Carbon Capture,” AP News, May 30 2025, https://apnews.com/article/climate-energy-projects-funding-canceled-cf3e9b5da749eb76a71c901ded20d711.
27Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Noah Gordon, and Milo McBride, “Climate Clarity: On the Future of Climate Action in the United States,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 17, 2025, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/climate-clarity-on-the-future-of-climate-action-in-the-united-states?lang=en.
28N. Hunter Johnston, Lisa M. Zarlenga, John Cobb, and Nick Sutter, “The One Big Beautiful Bill: Impact on the IRA's Clean Energy Tax Credits,” Steptoe, July 23, 2025, https://www.steptoe.com/en/news-publications/the-one-big-beautiful-bill-impact-on-the-iras-clean-energy-tax-credits.html.
29Katie Brigham, “Trump Hollowed Out the Government’s Carbon Removal Team,” Heatmap News, February 28, 2025, https://heatmap.news/carbon-removal/trump-dac-hubs.
30James Rodger Fleming, “Manufacturing the Weather,” Distillations Magazine, Science History Institute, July 23, 2010, www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/manufacturing-the-weather.
31Thia Griffin-Elliott, “70th Anniversary of the First Hurricane Seeding Experiment,” Hurricane Research Division blog, NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, October 12 2017, https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hurricane_blog/70th-anniversary-of-the-first-hurricane-seeding-experiment.
32Matt Novak, “Weather Control as a Cold War Weapon,” Smithsonian Magazine, December 5, 2011, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/weather-control-as-a-cold-war-weapon-1777409.
33“Project STORMFURY: An Experimental Program of Research on Hurricane Modification, 1962–1983,” Hurricane Research Division, NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hrd_sub/sfury.html; and Eleanor Cummins, “Operation Popeye: How the U.S. Government Used Weather as a Weapon in the Vietnam War,” Popular Science, March 20, 2018, https://www.popsci.com/operation-popeye-government-weather-vietnam-war.
35Paul J. Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?,” Climatic Change 77 (2006): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584‑006‑9101‑y.
36 U.S. Government Accountability Office, Cloud Seeding Technology: Assessing Effectiveness and Other Challenges, GAO-25-107328, December 19 2024, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-25-107328.pdf; Youssef Wehbe, Steve Griffiths, Alya Al Mazrouei, Omar Al Yazeedi, & Abdulla Al Mandous, “Rethinking Water Security in a Warming Climate: Rainfall Enhancement as an Innovative Augmentation Technique,” npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 6 (2023), Article no. 171, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00503-2.
37UN Environment Programme, Convention on Biological Diversity, “Decision Adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at Its Tenth Meeting: X/33. Biodiversity and Climate Change,” UNEP, October 29, 2010, https://www.cbd.int/doc/decisions/cop-10/cop-10-dec-33-en.pdf.
38Friends of the Earth, “Geoengineering: Unjust, Unproven and Risky,” Friends of the Earth (press release), February 2015, https://foe.org/news/2015-02-geoengineering-unjust-unproven-and-risky; and ETC Group, “Hands Off Mother Earth!,” ETC Group, https://www.etcgroup.org/content/hands-mother-earth-0.
39Haley Dunleavy, “An Indigenous Group’s Objection to Geoengineering Spurs a Debate About Social Justice in Climate Science,” Inside Climate News, July 7, 2021, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07072021/sami-sweden-objection-geoengineering-justice-climate-science.
40Geoengineering Monitor, “Support Alaska Native Delegation to Stop Arctic Ice Project,” Geoengineering Monitor, May 10, 2022, https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/support-alaska-native-delegation-to-stop-arctic-ice-project.
41POLITICO, “California City Votes to Block Solar Geoengineering Experiment,” June 5, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/05/california-geoengineering-blocked-00161733?.
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