Back in 2015 Elon Musk was sharing his immense concern about what would happen if “governments continue to rely on fossil fuels.” The founder of Tesla and Space X was, as reported by the Business Insider, especially worried about the two billion people living within 60 miles of a coastline. These folks wouldn’t just lose their homes to the rising seas, they would also lose their nations. In fact, in the world according to Elon Musk, if international governments don’t address climate change, mitigate their carbon footprints and offer incentives for businesses to go greener, the result will be “more displacement and destruction than all the wars in history combined.”
Mighty strong words from a man who has built a multi billion dollar empire, according to the Los Angeles Times, “running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.” These enterprises were significantly aided by the many green friendly policies which gave Musk at least $4.9 billion from a variety of state and federal government programs; tax credits, tax incentives, direct Treasury Department grants, enormous lease reductions, economic development subsidies, environmental credits and more. When President Trump stood up for climate sanity and U.S. sovereignty by withdrawing from the Paris Accord, poor Elon declared he was done with Trump’s advisory council. But Musk has had plenty of other lucrative reasons to get business done in Washington, according to Breitbart. For all his talk about rising temperatures, Musk spewed plenty of CO2 taking his private jet to Washington ten times to convince The Department of Energy to loan him $465 million in 2010. Just how many trips does Mr. Musk embark on? Do as the Space X founder says, not as he does.
After Musk tweeted his intention to depart from Trump’s council, Ted Cruz (R-TX) jumped into the Twitter fray. Senator Cruz suggested that the Tesla CEO express due diligence with his own carbon footprint and stop flying around the nation in his private jet. Conversely, the finance reporters over at Money.Cnn.com appear to be fawning over the man who dared to depart from President Trump’s councils:
“This is a bold move from a man who has a lot of skin in the game.”
For all of Musk’s business acumen and technological prowess, it’s fascinating that he would be so ignorant of the importance of Co2 to all life on earth, as well as the myriad of well researched scientific facts concerning the sun’s influence on the earth’s weather systems and the global climate science debate.
Is his fear of the Earth’s imminent extinction overloading his brain’s rational circuits? According to The Guardian, Musk has said he “has no other purpose than to make life interplanetary.” His ambitious plans for a mission to Mars is in high gear; travel is projected to begin in 2022. Current cost per person is estimated to be $10 billion. Maybe there’s a government subsidy for that. As for fuel, he plans to synthesize it on Mars from water and carbon dioxide. Hmmmm.
Space X is also launching the “Air Force’s secret X-37B uncrewed space plane” in the late summer of 2017. According to Yahoo.news, in order to compete for these lucrative contracts, Space X had to sue the government. Mr. Musk’s perspective may be too interplanetary to recall that old adage about not biting the hand that feeds you.
Sources include:
No comments:
Post a Comment