Changes in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of Weather Control in the Twentieth-Century United States

Abstract

This dissertation investigates American efforts to control the weather in the mid-twentieth century, and the many debates and controversies that those efforts provoked. Focusing on the 1940s to 1970s, it traces the rise and fall of cloud seeding: a controversial technology in which people put chemicals into clouds, in hopes of controlling everything from rainfall to sunshine, hurricanes to drought, local seasons to the global climate. Developed in 1946, cloud seeding quickly spread across the United States and the world. From booster development projects in the Southwest to top-secret climate warfare in Vietnam, cloud seeding provoked fierce debates—political, legal, scientific, ethical, environmental—about the dynamic, shifting relationship between people and the skies. Some believed that cloud seeding would bring a climate utopia. Others feared a climate apocalypse. And still others maintained that weather control was and always would be impossible. By the late 1970s, weather control seemed more elusive—and controversial—than ever before. The national preoccupation peaked and began to wane. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the rise and fall of weather control constituted both the apotheosis and failure of modern, secular ideas about controlling nature. Grounded in archival research, it combines historical and cultural studies with theoretical frameworks from the environmental humanities, science and technology studies (STS), political theory, and religious studies. To trace the hype, ambivalence, and conflict provoked by weather control, it weaves together newspapers and popular media; government, corporate, scientific, and legal records; and the personal papers of figures involved. Through these archives, it examines how the weather became an object of rationalization (through the production of knowledge, maps, experiments), militarization (through new forms of weaponry and warfare), capitalization (through agricultural and economic development), legalization (through new laws, regulations, court cases, and property regimes), and politicization (through postwar liberalism and conservatism in the U.S., as well as capitalist-democratic and communist ideologies abroad). Together, these processes can be understood as the attempted secularization and modernization of the sky. This dissertation explores how and why they failed. In addition to its historical significance, this research holds contemporary relevance, as climate change and geoengineering have sparked fierce debates over the wisdom of controlling the skies through technology. By narrating the strange and understudied history of weather control, “Changes in the Sky” contributes to critical, interdisciplinary studies on the politics of nature and the ethics of technology in the twentieth century, and today.