People keep citing Elon Musk as helping the environment. As best I can tell, most things he does harm the environment—that is, they lower the earth’s ability to sustain life and human society. He might think he’s helping, but I see the pattern going the other way, as I described in my podcast post and episode, Technology won’t solve environmental issues and you know it.
One electric car compared to an internal combustion engine car saves fuel, but he wants to sell as many as possible. His overall strategy increases overall consumption, just as the Watt steam engine led to more coal use despite being more efficiency, just as Uber increases miles driven and congestion.
Speaking of transportation, on public transit he said:
I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where [sic] you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end? And it doesn’t go all the time. … It’s a pain in the ass. That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.
On top of building more cars and undermining public transportation, he’s building spaceships. He’s had seven babies. . . he’s the opposite of helping the environment.
I could be wrong. Maybe there are sour grapes on my part. I don’t know the guy that well, but the signs I see imply he’s pursuing growth and externalizing costs, which have historically increased total waste. Our problem is not efficiency, but total waste.
