Elon Musk is taking part within the “dumbest experiment in historical past” and is “not good for America or the world” – and each of these quotes come from Elon Musk, himself.
(Notice: each use of citation marks on this article is a direct quote from Elon Musk, within the context of local weather change and the Paris Settlement)
In Donald Trump’s first day within the Oval Workplace (after committing treason in 2021, for which there’s a transparent authorized treatment), he as soon as once more introduced that he needs to pull the US out of the Paris Settlement.
This motion would lead to a warmer local weather, which suggests extra environmental destruction, extra displacement of individuals, extra loss of life and better prices for Individuals and everybody else on the planet, doubtless inflicting “extra displacement and destruction than all of the wars in historical past mixed.” (Until, in fact, it’s mitigated by Trump’s impotence as so a lot of his earlier makes an attempt at environmental destruction have been)
And, like final time, pulling out will weaken the place of America on the world stage. The transfer allies the US with such luminary states as Iran, Libya and Yemen, the one three different international locations on the earth to not ratify the Paris Settlement.
This order was not sudden, as Mr. Trump did the identical “dumb” factor in 2017, which President Biden reversed straight away in 2021. Mr. Trump additionally campaigned in 2024 on a platform of inflicting environmental destruction, committing to pump the brakes on the environmental and financial progress of President Biden’s insurance policies and forfeiting the growth in American manufacturing they introduced.
Mr. Trump justified this withdrawal through the use of the identical “propaganda from the carbon business” as he has previously, exhibiting his lack of know-how of the Settlement, of science, and of the economic system, as we lined earlier than. And similar to final time, the general public overwhelmingly opposes withdrawing from the settlement, by a few 2.5x margin.
However what has modified this time is the response from expertise firm CEOs, who beforehand appropriately acknowledged that pulling out of the Paris Settlement just isn’t good for the world, and now are actively taking part within the very destruction they decried previously.
In 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner and Fb CEO Mark Zuckerberg each decried pulling out of Paris, saying that it harms our planet and our future, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos vowed that Amazon would proceed to observe Paris targets (which it hasn’t adopted by way of on).
However this time, all three of these spineless husks not solely stayed quiet, but additionally personally donated a million {dollars} every to the very environmental destruction that they beforehand claimed to oppose.
Regardless of the silence of those cowardly billionaires who’ve fallen in step with destroying the planet’s future (once more, their phrases), worldwide leaders have a minimum of appropriately known as out Mr. Trump’s actions for his or her stupidity and feebleness. The UN’s local weather secretary, Simon Stiell, mentioned that the door stays open for the US to rejoin simply as final time, and identified that the world’s power transition is unstoppable. And the US Local weather Alliance, a coalition of states and cities that was shaped in 2017 to guard their residents from Trump’s harmful actions, additionally vowed to proceed to work to resolve the issue that Trump needs to worsen.
Most probably, probably the most important factor the US’ withdrawal from this world effort to resolve a worldwide drawback will do is to make sure that America is unable to steer that inevitable transition, and can hand that result in China. Congratulations Mr. Xi, you’re welcome for the worldwide management place we’ve granted to you. Signed, the republican occasion.
And as one other enterprise chief identified previously, “the one factor we achieve by slowing down the transition is simply slowing it down. It doesn’t make it not happen. It simply slows it down,” however that “the sooner we are able to deliver that date ahead, the higher.”
That enterprise chief is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who runs an organization whose mission is to speed up the world’s transition to sustainable power.
Musk has beforehand known as local weather change the “dumbest experiment in historical past.” He acknowledges that it’s going to trigger “extra displacement and destruction than all of the wars in historical past mixed.” He mentioned that carbon is the “turd within the punch bowl” of our environment and “if international locations don’t take motion, all of them will share in a nasty future.”
You may learn a transcript of his landmark 2015 speech on local weather change on the Sorbonne right here, or watch the video above.
And, in 2017, when Mr. Trump mentioned he would drop the US out of the Paris Settlement, Musk responded properly on the time by departing from a council of enterprise leaders that Mr. Trump had assembled. Musk mentioned he did so as a result of “Leaving Paris just isn’t good for America or the world.”
Nevertheless, deep within the throes of his present social media dependancy that resulted in him shedding ~$35 billion of his and different folks’s cash, Musk now appears to have misplaced any portion of himself that pretended to care concerning the planet.
Not solely has he not too long ago displayed that he doesn’t know even the fundamentals of how local weather change works, however he’s now actively part of a call that he beforehand mentioned was “not good for America or the world.”
As a thanks for his huge bribes to Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign, Musk has been appointed to the Division of Authorities Effectivity. This isn’t an precise division, however an advisory panel with no official authority.
It was created to be helmed by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, two of the supposedly most clever and succesful republican operatives, who nonetheless have each been tasked to do a job that might usually completed by one particular person (Ramaswamy has since give up or been pressured out, earlier than the job even began). The panel has a redundant mission to the already-existing Authorities Accountability Workplace – making it a redundant workplace to scale back redundancy (no, this isn’t a Monty Python sketch, that is apparently actual life).
So, regardless of being put able that may be very clearly busywork to make him really feel vital – and wherein he already admitted failure on the targets he set out for himself, weeks earlier than even beginning the job – this nonetheless implies that Musk is a member of the crew that has now signaled one more withdrawal from the Paris Settlement. (And notably, no person is speaking about how he’s doing at his job working Tesla, which he’s doing badly, and is even lobbying to hurt his personal firm as Tesla’s gross sales drop in a rising market)
However in contrast to final time, when he swiftly departed from Mr. Trump’s unofficial enterprise council for doing one thing that he appropriately identified as being dangerous for the world (and dangerous for his enterprise promoting renewable power), Musk has as an alternative spent the final couple days defending his use of an unambiguous Nazi salute in entrance of a stay TV viewers (which Nazis had been very completely happy to see).
The salute was not out of character for Musk, given his historical past of white supremacist statements and his present assist for German neo-Nazis. Musk’s assist has been famous by Germans, each among the many public and by one German auto CEO who sees it as a gross sales alternative, as a Tesla boycott positive aspects momentum in Germany attributable to Musk’s neo-Nazi advocacy.
He has but to make a public assertion leaving the administration that made this “harmful” choice, as an alternative selecting to stay on and proceed advancing the “dumbest experiment in human historical past” – and being “not good for America or the world,” in keeping with himself.
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