BEE Japan

Yesterday during my school’s emergency drill, I looked up into the sky and saw suspiciously parallel lines being painted in the sky by several planes.  They were leaving behind white smoke, but unlike normal jet contrails, these lines were lingering and, in fact, spreading across the blue sky overhead.  Here’s a link to the photo I took with the BEE cell phone, donated by friends at Jig.jp.

Immediately my mind jumped back to a documentary I watched back in the winter about Chemtrails: chemicals discharged into the sky, usually in attempt to bind with nearby clouds and induce rain (a process that has been practiced since the 1950s known as “cloud seeding”).

It’s not as far-fetched as you might think.  It’s no secret that China conducted daily cloud seeding to clear out Beijing’s air running up to the 2008 Summer Olympics (click here for link to Salon article on China’s cloud seeding). 

But these experiments aren’t monitored by any national or world agency, and most people have no idea that they take place.  I don’t think many people would be happy to know that a variety of elements, such as silver iodide (which is listed as a hazardous substance by the US EPA’s Clean Water Act), aluminum, and bromide, are being sprayed into our atmosphere, and that the levels of these chemicals in areas where Chemtrails have been spotted.

And Japan’s in on the mix too.  I came across this list of articles on cloud seeding in Asia published with the help of the JPSEPA (Japanese Cloud Seeding Experiment for Precipitation Augmentation), so while these experiments are out in the open, there’s virtually no discussion of the impacts that these experiments will have on people and the environment.

It seems as if all governments and organizations involved are only discussing the possible benefits of cloud seeding.  Inducing rain in parts of the world experiencing drought may sound like a great idea because it could bring more water for people to drink and to grow crops.  But if that water is becomes toxic as a result?  What’s the point?  There are also border problems; two of the world’s fasting developing and most populated countries, China and India, share many of the same clouds and water sources.  How do we know that cloud seeding in China isn’t going to disturb the humidity patterns of its neighbors? 
And the most obvious moral question here, I believe, is what gives humans the right to manhandle nature?  Haven’t we learned enough from our the water sources we’ve already poisoned, the near-fatal deforestation of the Amazon, the plastic death-traps we’ve created in the ocean, acid rain, smog–need I go on?–that we are clearly not the best patrons to our planet, and that maybe we should back off a bit and give Earth a little breather before we start pillaging for more resources? 

It’s our air too, right?  Look up in the sky and think about it.  It’s even here in Shiga.

For more info about Chemtrail, including organizations who are trying to keep our air clean, please check out the info I’ve recently added to BEE’s World Links page here.

Peace,
Salem