Absurdity
Right-Wing Group Demands Removal of Rainbows from Earth's Atmosphere
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: A conservative nonprofit filed a 340-page federal petition Thursday demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency develop and implement a plan to eliminate rainbows from the Earth's atmosphere, arguing that the naturally occurring optical phenomenon constitutes a repeated, unpermitted display of chromatic symbolism on federal airspace.
The American Clarity Foundation, headquartered in a suburb of Tulsa, listed three co-respondents in the filing: water droplets, sunlight, and what the petition describes as "the general concept of refraction."
"We are not anti-science," said foundation president Dale Burwick, at a press conference held beneath a partly cloudy sky that produced no rainbows, though not for lack of trying. "We are simply pro-transparency. And a six-color arc appearing uninvited over a children's soccer game is not transparency. That is an agenda."
The petition requests that the EPA convene a task force within 90 days to study "atmospheric remediation options," and asks that any interim rainbows be accompanied by a disclaimer visible from ground level.
EPA spokesperson Theresa Holt confirmed the agency had received the petition and was reviewing it "in accordance with standard procedures," which she clarified means it is currently in a pile.
The American Clarity Foundation was founded in 2019 and describes its mission as "restoring common sense to the visible world." Its logo is a sunrise rendered in gold, red, orange, amber, and what a graphic designer would describe as a soft coral. Collectively, the colors span approximately two-thirds of the visible spectrum. The foundation's letterhead uses all five.
When this was raised at the press conference, Burwick said the sunrise represents "warmth and American values," and that there is a meaningful distinction between those colors and rainbow colors, though he did not identify what the distinction was. He said his team was looking into it.
The petition itself is impressively thorough. Section 14 contains a seven-page argument that water droplets, by refracting sunlight into component wavelengths, are engaged in a form of unauthorized broadcasting. Section 22 proposes that the federal government explore cloud-seeding as a suppression method, or, failing that, "educational programming to help Americans understand that rainbows do not mean anything."
An appendix lists 47 documented rainbows from the past calendar year, including one that appeared over a Cracker Barrel in Knoxville and one that a foundation volunteer photographed over his own front yard before submitting it as evidence.
Atmospheric physicist Dr. Caroline Voss, reached by phone at the University of Colorado, said that removing rainbows from the atmosphere would require eliminating either sunlight, water vapor, or the laws of physics, and that the foundation's petition addresses none of these pathways. She paused for a moment and then said, "I'm sorry, can you read that back to me."
The petition has attracted 14,000 signatures, which the American Clarity Foundation describes as "a groundswell" and which represents approximately 0.004 percent of the American population, or, for scale, slightly fewer people than attended a recent regional boat show in Shreveport.
Several Republican members of Congress have expressed support for "looking into the matter," with one representative from Georgia releasing a statement calling rainbows "a distraction from real meteorological issues," without specifying what those are.
A coalition of prism manufacturers, optical physics professors, and the entire state of Hawaii has filed a counter-petition.
The EPA has until November to respond, at which point it may formally decline to eliminate the rainbow, a sentence that will then appear in a government document.
Burwick said the foundation is prepared to escalate. When asked how, he said they were exploring legal options against the sun.
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