Stacey Glaser
In the wake of recent hurricanes Helene and Milton, a wave of outlandish conspiracy theories has swept across social media, linking the devastation to government weather manipulation. Claims that these storms were somehow engineered by the Biden administration to serve political agendas have stoked fears and distrust. As absurd as they may seem, these conspiracies reflect deeper anxieties about human attempts to dominate nature—an ambition with roots stretching back to the Enlightenment.
While it’s tempting to dismiss these notions as fringe fantasies, they are part of a long-standing tendency to view nature not as a complex, autonomous system but as something to be controlled. This mindset, historically shaped by the Enlightenment and colonial endeavors, has morphed into a technocratic mission, where governments and scientists have sought to manipulate the environment for political, economic, and military purposes. Today’s environmental conspiracies are the descendants of a broader philosophy that positions humanity as the master of the natural world—a dangerous illusion that has led us into ecological crises.
The Genesis of Environmental Domination
The desire to control nature is not new. Since the 17th century, Western thought has placed humankind at the helm of nature’s ship, with thinkers like Francis Bacon advocating for scientific mastery over natural forces. Bacon argued that through empirical observation and experimentation, humans could and should dominate nature. His ideas laid the intellectual foundation for the modern state’s engagement with the natural world, pushing it toward relentless extraction, manipulation, and control.
This drive to subdue nature reached its zenith during the colonial era. European powers, eager to expand their empires, embraced pseudo-scientific theories to justify environmental exploitation. In North Africa, for instance, French colonists propagated the myth that the Sahara Desert was once a lush, fertile landscape destroyed by the irresponsible ecological practices of indigenous peoples. This narrative helped justify European control over the region’s resources, casting the colonizers as saviors tasked with restoring a supposedly devastated environment. In reality, the Sahara has been arid for millennia—hardly the lost Eden colonial powers imagined.
In British India, similarly misguided theories were concocted to rationalize failed irrigation projects. When British engineers couldn’t control the volatile Indus River, they blamed the unpredictability of Himalayan glaciers. Lacking scientific rigor, these claims allowed colonial authorities to justify their continued experimentation with the environment, often to disastrous effect, with floods and famines becoming the unintended outcomes of their meddling.
The U.S. and the Weather Control Myth
The United States is no stranger to these ecological fantasies. In the 19th century, figures like James Espy, the country’s first meteorologist, and Robert Dyrenforth, a Civil War general, proposed bizarre weather control experiments. Espy lobbied to burn forests in Appalachia to induce rain, while Dyrenforth launched dynamite into the sky, hoping the explosions would make clouds release precipitation. While these efforts ultimately failed, they illustrate a uniquely American obsession with bending nature to human will.
Even more disturbing, during the Cold War, weather manipulation became a geopolitical strategy. Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir claimed to have discovered how to control hurricanes by seeding clouds with dry ice, and military strategists eyed these techniques for their potential to disrupt enemy nations. These efforts, while rooted in scientific ambition, often veered into the realm of fantasy, driven by the belief that nature could be mastered like any other adversary.
Today’s Conspiracies: A Reflection of Old Fears
Fast forward to today, and environmental conspiracy theories have taken on new forms, yet their origins remain the same. The claims that recent hurricanes were engineered by the government or that geoengineering is being used to manipulate global weather patterns are not merely the delusions of internet fringe groups. They reflect a deep-seated suspicion of the state’s relationship with nature, an anxiety that governments have overstepped their bounds by attempting to control planetary systems.
In truth, there’s no evidence to support these claims. Modern weather disasters are the product of complex climate systems, exacerbated by human-driven climate change, not secret government programs. Yet the allure of conspiracy theories persists because they tap into a broader fear: that in our quest to dominate nature, we have lost control of it entirely.
The Real Crisis: The State’s Misguided Role
This fixation on control extends beyond popular conspiracy theories to the very institutions tasked with managing the environment. Since the Enlightenment, the modern state has viewed its role as not only the regulator of human affairs but also the manager of natural processes. Whether through geoengineering projects aimed at combatting climate change or bureaucratic frameworks designed to regulate natural resources, the state has consistently tried to impose order on a chaotic and unpredictable world.
But nature resists domination. It is a self-regulating system, driven by forces beyond our full comprehension. Attempts to manage it through top-down, technocratic approaches often have unintended consequences. From the colonial experiments that led to famines in India to the industrial activities driving today’s climate crisis, human interference with nature rarely goes according to plan.
A New Path Forward
Instead of viewing nature as something to be controlled, we must learn to coexist with it. This means rethinking our relationship with the environment—not as conquerors or managers but as stewards who recognize the limits of our power. The ecological crises we face today are the direct result of centuries of environmental domination, and the state’s techno-bureaucratic machinery has often exacerbated the problem.
The path forward requires humility. We must abandon the illusion that we can manipulate the planet without consequence. Instead of devising grand schemes to control weather patterns or geoengineer the climate, we should focus on minimizing our impact, reducing emissions, and respecting the delicate balance of natural systems.
Environmental conspiracies may be absurd, but they reflect a broader truth: humanity’s obsession with dominating nature has led us down a dangerous path. The real solution lies not in further attempts to control the uncontrollable but in finding ways to live in harmony with the natural world before it’s too late.
