Elon Musk: Asshat
Electric cars don’t address any problem associated with climate change.
“I don’t know anything about global warming except everyone is supposed to give up driving”. That was a statement from my brother Dave, retired, a successful middle-class University of California graduate in sociology, a bit scientifically illiterate, about typical for an American. In response, I wrote an article published on Medium explaining how CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from 210 parts per million to 420 parts per million, and that this appears to have been the direct result of humans burning through megatons of coal and oil since the industrial revolution. As an adjunct professor working towards a doctorate in paleoecology, my thesis asked if that increase resulted in warming enough to kill off the world’s coral reefs, would ocean acidification cause coral skeletons to dissolve, triggering an uncontrolled chain reaction of increasing CO2 followed by increased global warming. I was going to look at fossils from past extinction events; but I became disabled and did not finish my doctorate.
I did continue to swim. I have been snorkeling and SCUBA diving on California kelp beds and Pacific reefs for fifty years now. I watched over time as the marine life withered, died, and disappeared. Resuming SCUBA diving after a few years off, I travelled to the World Heritage Site coral reefs in Belize, where there was not a single live head of coral, and the skeletons of the coral were releasing fine bubbles, some no doubt oxygen from the red algae covering the coral, most from the coral dissolving back into carbon dioxide. I didn’t need fossils or a doctorate degree, the chain reaction is already happening. Add to that the release of methane from melting permafrost. Even if humans stopped adding greenhouse gasses to the air, nature continues to no matter if that may soon lead to human extinction. Giant kelp, once thick around California’s Channel Islands National Park is almost all gone, along with sea urchins and abalone. Ending driving, ending car emissions, won’t bring back the ocean’s life.
I still try to educate the few people who believe climate change is a hoax, or is somehow exaggerated as a threat. I point out the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. I was reminded of this twice this week. Someone put the admittedly bleak The Oceanic Eve of Destruction on their list of 100 most important articles of the 21st century, and a guy I asked about his belief that climate change was a hoax by paid off scientists to control people who responded “did you get the bends and refuse to go to a hyperbaric chamber?’, which I found both intelligent and funny, although dangerously wrong.
“Elon Musk is an asshat” sprang into my mind, shorthand for the larger idea; electric cars won’t do anything to mitigate this worsening crisis. My brother correctly posted to Facebook once that electric cars are not a solution to climate change at all, since the rare earth elements for wind turbines and car batteries are in fact rare, and mining and refining rare earth metals is massively polluting, including generating still more carbon dioxide. Tesla will not save humanity, and Mr. Musk buying Twitter to spread anti-Semitism and disinformation is highly unproductive. Except, as my critic implied, Elon Musk can use his status as richest man in the world to line his pockets, and maybe he uses his money to silence some of his critics. He did briefly give aid to the Russian invaders of Ukraine by cutting off our ally Ukraine’s access to Starlink’s ability to target missiles. Climate change denial could be in part due to his paid influence, manipulating people. We need to quit fossil fuels, but switching to electric cars doesn’t improve the situation.
Get Tom Owen McElroy’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Academic scientists are rarely motivated by money, but tend to be rather fanatic about accurate, objective fact. No one I have met in paleontology or climatology would ever alter one iota of data for monetary gain. Some scientists might alter data for fame or notoriety; a single medical doctor falsified research to make it appear that vaccines and autism were somehow linked. Today, long after that data was proven to be deliberately falsified, vaccines are still feared by millions, and more than 100,000 Americans died after refusing the very safe Covid-19 vaccine. Everyone heard the lie and believed it;’ few people learned the link to autism was a hoax, even after the research paper was retracted.
As he rose to prominence, I believed media reports that Elon Musk was a brilliant scientist, and so I assumed he had the highest ethical standards. In the end, he proved himself to be a brilliant manager of other people’s talent, but in public he is a manipulative, dishonest partisan hack. Money gives the holder the ability to help society broadly, to heal the sick, feed the hungry, house the homeless, to remake the country into a better place. He could have been a hero, and helped our divided country to heal, had he bought Twitter, now ‘X’, to moderate content to include only objective fact followed by vital discussion of values and opinions. We’ve given up on holding public figures accountable for their actions; I hold myself to a much higher standard and live it, in public and private. If I can, anyone can.
We can’t give up cars, trucks, buses, planes and all our means of transit without leaving literally billions of people to die. Food, medicine, and other resources aren’t often produced exactly where they are needed, and those goods need to be transported. Ideally, that’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid, and why I work to spread the most basic facts. In Texas, under the leadership of Willie Nelson, a workable solution has been available and profitable for years that lets humans remain mobile, but actually lowers atmospheric carbon dioxide is already underway; biodiesel and biofuels. Energy from photosynthesis. Any plant that produces cellulose or sugar can be fermented into alcohol which can be used to fuel motors. Any plant that produces some form of oil, olive, canola, sunflower, peanut and dozens more, can be used to fuel a slightly modified diesel engine. Every person with some outdoor space can grow fuel from water, CO2, and sunshine. Produce an excess, pump it into empty wells, and we can permanently remove carbon dioxide from the air. Remaining plant material can be used for composting and soil recovery while sequestering still more CO2.
Willie Nelson was the hero Elon Musk can only dream of being. After buying his wife a car with a diesel engine, Willie Nelson had the car converted to burn biodiesel; then he contracted with soybean growers and started BioWillie in 2004. He required the highest production quality, and merged with another biofuel company, Pacific Biodiesel, in 2012. Wikipedia entries on biofuels don’t reference journal articles past 2010, with one reference to a company HollyFrontier planning a large production facility in 2019. Unfortunately, biofuels don’t have a billionaire American sponsor, or a large and enthusiastic biofuel social movement. Biofuels can be grown in the United States, byproducts used to improve soil on American farms. Elon Musk’s Tesla gave his battery technology to China, and Tesla batteries are made in China.
I’ve admitted here that I am, well, older. I remember before microchips had to be in everything our neighbor Tony, the middle son of Holocaust survivors, who rebuilt the frame on a Volkswagen, the engine, the suspension, and made himself a dune buggy. He later built more cars, at least one airplane, and a small fortune. MAGA cultists often spread harmful disinformation, but their broad complaints on the unequal distribution of wealth, and their desire for better economic opportunities are real, true, and legitimate. Switch from fossil fuel to biofuel, and if we turned out simplified diesel engines manufactured in America, angry MAGA followers could build the engines, work as installers in every town, grow the fuel sources, refine the biofuels, and be invested in 21st century society as full, money-making shareholders that they want to be, and deserve to be. Everyone benefits if we can repair the damage generations of us unwittingly caused burning unsustainable fuel that now threatens our species survival.
Recent scientifi journal articles suggest we may have passed the U.N. designated maximum allowable 1.5°C total warming above industrial revolution levels, or may be facing 5°C warming already. One final point to everyone, but especially any former climate change hoaxers or denialists; no one is to blame. Automobile advocate or environmental activist, there is no point to blame. Fixing blame fixes nothing; we face extinction if we don’t act, together or separately. Many of the people who caused, or worsened, the oncoming crisis knew what would happen. As an undergraduate in 1980, I learned CO2 and climate change were potentially disastrous, but what I’ve seen happen to the environment is already worse than our darkest estimates for its impact two centuries from now. Real, good science is time consuming, and the changes have far outpaced our ability to predict them.
Even Elon Musk is not a complete asshat. He is correct that we are committing genocide against ourselves unless and until we end our dependence on fossil fuels. Electric cars are not the correct solution to the larger problem, but there was a new Tesla parked in front of my building last night, and, damn that is one fine looking car. Can I get it in biodiesel?
