by Ramishah Maruf & Brandon Miller
“RFK Jr is not new here in pointing out this conspiracy, but he is the highest-level government official, sadly, who has fallen into this particular trap,” climate economist Gernot Wagner told CNN.
How ‘chemtrails’ went from conspiracy to legislation
Even before Kennedy’s new position, conspiracies about geoengineering and chemtrails ran rampant online. A 2017 study by Dustin Tingley and Wagner, the climate economist, found 60% of geoengineering discourse on social media over the past decade was conspiratorial.But the chemtrail conspiracy theory was around long before social media, likely originating in the mid-1990s, possibly earlier. And when extreme weather happens, discourse on those conspiracy theories tend to spike, Wagner told CNN.
“We see those weather extremes more and more due to climate change, and I can see how that now gets then connected to this chemtrails conspiracy, especially if people at the highest level of government are suddenly tweeting about this as well,” Wagner said.
Quoted in: “State lawmakers are looking to ban non-existent ‘chemtrails.’ It could have real-life side effects.” by Ramishah Maruf & Brandon Miller, CNN (25 March 2025).