The great
carbon divide
Elon Musk was once an environmental hero: is he
still a rare green billionaire?
Renowned for clean-energy tech, the billionaire seems
to be at one now with super-emitters and far-right global climate deniers
by Oliver
Milman
Mon 20 Nov
2023 00.07 GMT
Elon Musk
was once lauded as a sort of green Tony Stark – the genius inventor who leads a
double life as superhero Iron Man – for single-handedly tackling the climate
crisis one Tesla at a time, helping to forge a clean energy future and pushing
for new taxes to drive down fossil fuel use.
But the
climate credentials of the world’s richest person have become clouded by his
embrace of rightwing politicians, some of whom dismiss global heating, as well
as by his management of X, formerly known as Twitter, during which many climate
scientists have fled the platform amid a proliferation of misinformation about
the climate crisis.
Those
contradictions run deeply through his work and life. The man who sometimes
seems to think of himself as a spartan-living, green thinker is actually one of
the elite 1% of the world’s population who, according to a new Oxfam report,
produce as much carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of humanity,
comprising 5 billion people. Where does the reality lie?
In 2020,
Musk vowed to get rid of “almost all physical possessions” and he has since
jettisoned a number of mansions, opting instead to occasionally sleep on the
couch of friends’ homes and, more recently, to move into a $50,000 modular home
in Boca Chica, Texas, near the testing and development site of SpaceX, his
space tourism venture. And unlike many billionaires, Musk does not own a
superyacht, which tend to be highly polluting.
He can also
point to his work furthering Tesla, a company that has eclipsed traditional
carmakers as it has reshaped the electric car market around the world. And he
can cite Xprize, a $100m competition to spur new technology to remove carbon
from the atmosphere.
For many
years, and most recently in an interview in 2021, Musk backed the idea of
taxing carbon emissions to force down planet-heating pollution, arguing that
carbon was an “unpriced externality”.
But Musk’s
rampant use of private jet flights creates part of the problem that his car
business is trying to tackle. Since last October, the month he assumed control
of X, Musk’s private plane – a $70m Gulfstream jet with 19 seats and a kitchen
– has taken about 200 flights, shuttling between his business interests in
Texas, the home of SpaceX and Tesla, and the Bay Area, where X has its
headquarters.
There have
been longer trips, too, to France, Italy and Singapore, flight records show,
meaning Musk’s private jet has spent nearly a month in the air over the past
year, creating more than 2,500 tonnes of planet-heating emissions in the
process.
The
emissions from these flights dwarf those caused by the average US household,
which amount to fewer than 50 tonnes a year. Musk has argued that the aircraft
helps him work longer hours and is the “one exception” to a lifestyle that is
relatively spartan for a man with a personal wealth of more than $230bn, a
figure approaching the GDP of Greece.
Emissions
flowing from Musk’s investments are also significant, with the Oxfam report
finding that his stake in Tesla meant he was responsible for a further 79,000
tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Still, that
is far less than others in the rarefied world of the ultra-rich; the report
calculates that 125 of the wealthiest people emit an average of 3m tonnes of
planet-heating pollution a year via their financial dealings.
Research by
Jared Starr, a sustainability scientist at the University of Massachusetts,
found that America’s richest 10% of people were responsible for 40% of the
country’s climate pollution. He said: “Musk is a complicated figure. On one
hand he’s played a critical role in popularising EV and battery storage with
Tesla, on the other he’s flying space tourists on missions that create a huge
amount of pollution. Private jets also use a lot of fossil fuel, so he would
himself be in the super-emitter category.”
Possibly
more troubling is X’s descent into becoming a wellspring of climate denialism
under Musk – the platform has become a “dumpster fire”, according to Starr –
and the billionaire’s embrace of Republican politicians, some of whom have
dismissed established climate science.
“The rise
of climate denialism on X and the support of candidates who call climate change
a hoax is incredibly unhelpful and takes away some of the shine from the image
of him as a benevolent billionaire helping us reach the promised land of clean
energy future,” Starr said.
Musk has
praised Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, as “a
very promising candidate” despite Ramaswamy calling the climate change agenda a
hoax. Musk responded to Ramaswamy on X about the climate crisis saying: “It is
possibly overstated in the short term, but we should be concerned about it long
term.”
This month,
Musk, who has appeared to back a growing number of rightwing conspiracy
theories, suggested that environmentalists had “gone too far”. He said on Joe
Rogan’s podcast: “If you start thinking that humans are bad then the natural
conclusion is humans should die out. If AI gets programmed by the
extinctionists, its utility function will be the extinction of humanity. They
won’t even think it’s bad.”
Musk, who
has 11 children, has expressed concerns about population collapse, although
experts have forecast the opposite, with a further 2 billion people expected to
be added to the global population in the next 30 years.
These
pronouncements, and the changes in moderation wrought upon X, have dismayed
scientists and activists.
“Daily, I
receive comments that range from disparaging to downright vile,” posted Prof
Katharine Hayhoe, a prominent climate researcher who pointed out that Twitter
had once been a vital resource for those concerned about worsening global
heating. “I mourn its destruction,” she added.
Musk tried
to come across as environmentally conscious but was not, said Beatriz Barros, a
researcher at Indiana University who co-authored a 2021 study on the carbon
footprints of the super-rich (which found that Musk’s lifestyle was responsible
for more than 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year even without his jet use,
though this was prior to his house downsizing). “He tries to have it both ways,
acting like this sort of problem solver while he’s responsible for these
shocking levels of emissions from his private jet,” Barros said.
She added
that not only did billionaires such as Musk have a “preposterous” outsized
impact upon the environment through their own consumption and business
practices, they also had a disproportionate influence over government policy.
The White House has sought to ally with Musk, as well as other billionaires
such as Bill Gates, in recent times to further its climate goals.
“It’s all
so undemocratic: these people think they can behave how they like because they
have money and power,” Barros said. “We are told to drive less, eat less meat,
that we are all in this fight together, and then in one second these people are
emitting more than someone in their entire lifespan. How is that fair?”
A possible
remedy, Starr suggested, would be to apply a carbon tax, which Musk has
previously supported, to billionaires. A 1% carbon tax on Musk alone would
provide enough money to boost global climate adaption funding for developing
countries – the places most vulnerable to disastrous heatwaves, floods and
droughts unleashed by rising temperatures – by 10%, according to Starr.
“Leading on
climate on one hand and then propping up climate deniers on the other isn’t a
complementary picture,” Starr said. “A 1% tax would mean Musk would still get
wealthier but it would make a huge difference to those countries least
responsible for climate change but hit by their worst effects.”
This article was amended on 20 November 2023
because an earlier version misspelled Jared Starr’s surname.
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