Musk’s anti-climate rhetoric and actions are poison for the world’s largest electric car company
Until recently many Tesla owners could excuse Elon Musk’s erratic, often bullying behaviour because Tesla was almost the only game in town when it came to EVs, and for all his faults Musk seemed to care about solving the climate crisis. But is any of that still true?
Evidence shows that consumers in nearly all countries are increasingly put off by Musk’s behaviour, and it is affecting Tesla sales (Reuters 2024). But after Musk’s two hour conversation with Donald Trump in August, which included the “dumbest climate conversation of all time” according to Bill McKibben, this will surely get worse. Not only is Musk endorsing and funding the campaign of a man who promises to dismantle efforts to curb climate change, he has now descended into climate denial himself.
The risk of climate change, according to Musk, is not as high as people think, and he is more worried about the direct health affects of CO2, saying “If you go past a thousand parts per million of CO2, you start getting headaches and nausea.” It’s worth noting that last time the earth was at 1000 ppm of carbon dioxide, 50 million years ago, it was 10 degrees Celcius (18 F) warmer and the sea level was 60 meters (200 feet) higher (Royal Society 2020). Since the highest point in Florida is 105 m above sea level there will still be some islands left where the third most populous state of the US used to be, but not much room for golf courses at 1000 ppm. Extreme climate change would also likely lead to mass migration and population collapse long before 1000 ppm.
Equally troubling is Musk’s support for Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Musk has taken a stand for election denial by the former Brazilian president, who lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 but has taken a page out of the Trump playbook to claim the election was stolen. X has broken Brazilian law by continuing to amplify election denial messages, which Musk is calling a defence of free speech. This is apparently a new idea for Musk though, who had no problem with X following the law in Turkey and India when right-leaning governments made less defensible demands to censor their opposition (The Verge 2024). The climate implications of Bolsonaro returning to power could even be greater than a Trump return to power, since Bolsonaro oversaw record levels of deforestation in the Amazon (Le Monde 2022).
Is it unfair to tie all of this to Tesla? Not really. The overinflated value of Tesla stock, and the wealth it generates, is being used by Musk to amplify climate denial by himself and others on his social media platform, and to directly and indirectly support authoritarian politicians who would undo global progress on climate. I appreciate the role Tesla played in advancing EV adoption (with substantial government assistance, let’s remember) but there are plenty of excellent EVs to choose from today.
I’m happy to no longer own Tesla stock not only because it goes against my values, but I also think the stock price is unsustainable; the behaviour of Musk combined with the growing competition on all sides (BYD is now tied with Tesla in EV sales) could finally lead the stock price to deflate to more normal levels, if not as extreme as the “soufflé under a sledgehammer” scenario Musk described in 2020. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but either way I want no part of it. I love my EV, which is fun to drive and saves us a lot of money, and I’m increasingly happy it’s not a Tesla.
As an antidote to the dumbest climate conversation of all time, here’s a very smart climate conversation with Saul Griffith (Spotify link https://open.spotify.com/episode/1EijFWg8Ja5p04wbg5Acga?si=U_GRRXsARfC_HpFbWP5TRA&t=335)
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