Is Elon Musk Good for the Environment?

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Elon Musk has made a great legacy for his finance, economics and technological innovation.

Ultimately when it comes purely to the environment, I see him as no good.

Please step outside the box when it comes to cars: Whatever fuel cars run on, they put a tremendous strain on the environment. They require roads which cut through ecosystems and require heavy maintenance. Production, transport, spread and utilization of asphalt and concrete are bad for the environment. The paved over of areas for drivable and parkable surfaces absorb heat and raise local temperatures while rerouting rain and water flows while adding pollutants to that water. Production of any engine or fuel type car requires the mining and smelting of metals, which is also tremendously bad for the environment, just to build the car itself.
Now, the fuel: Whether your car runs on an electric battery or a gas engine, the power ultimately comes from the combustion of fossil fuel, whether it be in your engine or at the local power plant. If your power plant is non fossil fuel, it probably runs on either nuclear, which leaves dangerous radioactive waste, or hydroelectric, which has flooded vast areas and disrupted ecosystems. Electric cars will encourage more of one or the other, or both, by driving demand for grid electricity much higher. Electric cars also require more smelting and production of specific and normally harmful and likely-to-be poorly disposed of toxic metals for their batteries.

Elon Musk encourages car dependency. He has not stepped outside the box of car-dependent society. He advocates building and subsidizing more roads. What Musk has accomplished in his technological advances in space travel is truly great. However, we are still burning fossil fuels as our only means of traveling into orbit and space. Should this really be any priority for us at this time of environmental challenges?

There are many productive and happy low-car cities planned around walkability, active and mass transit Some good examples are in Finland and the Netherlands, where cycling is able to be used as the primary form of transit even in the Finnish harsh winter due to their winter maintenance of cycling infrastructure. People are healthier and even crime is lower due to the higher density and lower anonymity of non-car-centered urban planning.
 
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You're not wrong in saying all these things are bad for the environment. However:
  • some things are worse than others, and which is worse depends on what you're the most concerned about: the climate, habitat preservation, biodiversity, pollutants, ...
  • you haven't mentioned renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, waves, tides
  • all energy production has some negative impact on the environment: Windmills kill birds and require roads/infrastructure, solar power require mining of rare earth minerals etc.
  • all transportation has some negative impact on the environment: That includes buses, trains, hot air balloons ...
  • almost all human activity has some negative impact on the environment: from the camp-fires of our stone-age ancestors to laptops and Netflix
We have to ask ourselves where we would be if Tesla didn't exist. Or if everyone were still driving around in combustion engine cars, with no hope of transitioning to electric. Or where we would be at this point in time on the road to complete climate disaster without hydro power and nuclear power.

As for Elon Musk, I think mostly he's just another billionaire. Maybe what makes him stand out are his interest in tech and especially tech for the future.
 
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Elon Musk has made a great legacy for his finance, economics and technological innovation.

Ultimately when it comes purely to the environment, I see him as no good.

Please step outside the box when it comes to cars:

you make some great points. They are not even really debatable.
Elon Musk encourages car dependency.
Well, not him alone.
I don't think it's quite fair to blame him. Perhaps you can blame society as a whole for not getting rid of their cars and taking the bus.
There are many productive and happy low-car cities planned around walkability, active and mass transit

And I love this.
BTW, I bought my car 25 years ago and average only 4000 miles a year. I walk to as many places as I can. I also live near bus stop and the train station is not that far away. But if I'm leaving my little city it's often just drive my car for 30 minutes or take a 2 hour bus ride.

My sister bought a Tesla a few years back but the hates musk now (for political reasons) and won't buy another Tesla.
 
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A little off topic but maybe not since Elon Musk is also a proponent of self driving cars.

One of the biggest problems in mass transit is what transportation experts have coined the Last Mile Problem.

The last mile travel problem gained a lot of public attention in regards to the movement of goods. It's the least efficient mile. It also has the same problem in commuting.

Self driving vehicles may be a good solution to the last mile problem.
Especially in the movement of goods. but I also see it maybe be the way we move people to work in the future. I can imagine an app, you plug in an arrival time or a departure time, your location and your destination and a robot car comes and gets you. If you reguraly come and go to the same place it might even have an automatic carpool function.



 
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Maybe if we kill him (in Minecraft) and let the nature take him, he'll be beneficial to the ecosystem.
I was joking.. 🥺
 
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The biggest problem which leads to car-dependency in urban planning seem to me to be zoning. Of course at this level, Elon Musk no longer applies. Most municipalities still prefer to zone for single-family individual houses, which is the worst living arrangement for humans for the environment. Any attempt at integrating mass or active transit under this arrangement results in too much inconvenience and too long distances for non-car travel to be acceptable.

Cities in Finland and the Netherlands, just to continue with my over-generalization from before, have decided to prioritize zoning for plexes (say for argument's sake, buildings of between two to ten dwellings each - not too big so as to require much space in between such as in Brazilia, American urban social housing projects or Soviet housing blocs, and not too small so as to increase distance to services beyond what is walkable and bikeable for most).
 
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The biggest problem which leads to car-dependency in urban planning seem to me to be zoning.
Agreed.
Another similar issue is that zoning requires each business to have X number of parking spots. So a big business must have big parking lots. The big parking lots that surround the business adds more distance to that last mile problem unless the busses drop off in the parking lot.

If businesses didn't have all those parking spots they would be more pedestrian friendly. plus if there wasn't so much parking - there would be a further incentive not to drive but to take the bus.

If more people took public transportation they could add more routes and vehicles making travel time shorter thus making public transportation more attractive.

Covid sort of helped a lot in this area. First off by businesses closing and people working from home but also getting people used to ordering online and having it delivered. Since deliveries don't usually go out one customer at a time - but people tend to shop - one business at a time - it does increase efficiency.

Although the delivery van that was in the local pilot program had 4 lockers - its been replaced by a little tiny one - delivery at a time robot.

This one travels on side walks

Lucky_California_Pleasanton-Starship_delivery_robots-customer.png
 
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My local newspaper reported this


A few years back I read an article where the author proposed self driving taxis to be the solution to all our urban woes. He envisioned a world where no one owned a car but everyone could use an app to call a robot taxi.

One thing he thought of that we would no longer need parking lots. because no one would need to park. Carpooling could be somewhat automatic. Taxis could come in various sizes so if it was just you - you would get a one person car. And if it was the whole family you would get a van.

Less gridlock cause the taxis overlord could monitor and regulate.
 
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I have given up on the environment. I try not to contribute too much to the damage but despite new technologies and recycling, capitalism will always demand that we abuse the Earth. In my job, we might offer vegetarian and vegan options but when you see the amount of water that gets used in the washing machines and when cleaning the floors, and that on top of cooking, it just makes your heart sink. I have hope because I believe Jesus will return and sort it all out but if I wasn't a christian I would still be hoping for a new reality after I die, rather than hope in this one!
 
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Let's not forget that communist countries (Soviet Union, China) have, in many locations, much worse environmental degradation than many similar instances in capitalist countries. The problem itself is not exclusively capitalism.
Myself, I use biodegradable laundry strips and try to use natural and biodegradable cleaning agents whenever and wherever possible.
Please share some optimism.
 
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Musk has been good for the environment (and consequently good for human and animal well-being) because the success of Tesla is pushing other car companies to make less fossil fuel cars and therefore reducing climate change and pollution. Nuclear and hydro powered EVs are way better for the environment than fossil fuels, plus solar and wind will continue to grow.

Musk may also do a second very important thing which is push the development of autonomous cars. These cars won't be allowed on the road if they cause more or the same as current car accident deaths, but it's more likely they will reduce deaths, in the long run maybe by a large amount. It is possible that autonomous lives may eventually cause thousands or millions of lives to be saved.

These are Musk's two great contributions to humanity which will likely cause him to save or greatly improve many thousands of lives. It could even be a million or more. (Although it is an open question how much of it is down to him and how much of it is him being the face of Tesla claiming credit for the work of other inventors and engineers and investors - would all of this happened without him though?)

There is also space exploration and neuralink but I see that as more speculative for now what will be the net benefit or harm of that, so we can leave that out.

There is also the question of Musk's takeover of twitter. He has attacked and reduced its left wing bias, and increased its freedom of speech, but also made the platform a bit more ugly and sacked thousands of people, causing disruption to their lives. Overall, it seems that whatever the net benefit or net negative effect of Musk's twitter takeover it is likely smaller than the effect of Tesla.

There is also the fact that he represents the billionaire class and the need for more equality, but perhaps he himself isn't to blame but the system or the society that promotes such mediocre people to fame and fortune. Unlike most billionares who are driven by pure profit and revenue growth, he arguably really is aiming for nobile motives in his own juvenile and haphazard way.

However, Musk's tweets also reveal - or confirm - that he isn't after all a particularly smart or pleasant person. Which makes you wonder if caring for the Earth is maybe all an act and he's really driven by power and prestige and narcissism. But probably give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

So has probably done more good than bad, but you wouldn't want him as your boss or neighbour.
 
Another article in today's paper referred to RoboTaxis already in service in San Francisco.
These were Cruise Robotaxis that could not navigate around police tape. But to me the important thing was that there WERE Cruise Robotaxis

I hadn't realized the technology and its implementation was so far along

 
I wonder what is the cost to the environment related to the way Musk treats his employees?

Obviously, publicly telling everyone they've got to come back into the office rather than work from home (even when there's no productivity benefit) will produce a very real environmental hit even if all the employees travelled in EVs (which I doubt). However, what about the increased reliance on pre-prepared food by those who're being encouraged to work more hours and therefore don't have time to do stuff at home? What about the environmental impact from the medical treatment of those being worked to breaking point? Probably not difficult to come up with plenty of other similar "what-ifs".

If the thread was asking "are Musk's commercial ventures good for the environment?" I'd probably have to spend a bit more time thinking. However, the question was "Is Musk good for the environment" and my opinion is that he's not good for anything, environmental or otherwise. He's a fantastic example of "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".
 
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While I am a great enthusiast of electric cars, and Teslas among them, I am less and less of a fan of Elon Musk, and today regard him to be a very sorry excuse for a human being, on par with most right-wing billionaires.
 
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The cost to the environment of Musk making a few thousand people work from home is negligible next to the benefit of a few million Teslas sold.

I think too often we look at pros and cons without weighing them up.

The issue with Musk is that he has done maybe 2 great things, and say 10 major bad things. So in that sense it doesn´t look good. But the thing is that the 2 great things appear to have done more good than the 10 bad things. That doesn´t make him a good person, but it does appear to me that his existence has done more good in the world than bad.
 
The cost to the environment of Musk making a few thousand people work from home is negligible next to the benefit of a few million Teslas sold.

I think too often we look at pros and cons without weighing them up.

The issue with Musk is that he has done maybe 2 great things, and say 10 major bad things. So in that sense it doesn´t look good. But the thing is that the 2 great things appear to have done more good than the 10 bad things. That doesn´t make him a good person, but it does appear to me that his existence has done more good in the world than bad.
He's not letting any work from home, he's demanding them to work at the offices or be fired.
I'd get a Prius if I could
 
I'd get a Prius if I could
Just saw this. What's holding you back? Is it the cost? Surely Priuses are not too expensive and easy to find,, they have been making them since the 1990s

Just want to make sure you know that you can probably replace even a $2000 car with an electric car and save a lot on emissions at no overall cost.

Maths might be

$2000 petrol car + $2000 per year on petrol/maintenance for 5 years, total spend $12,000 (worthless car at the end, no resale value).

Second hand EV $10,000 (10 year old car) + $1000 per year on electricity/maintenance for 5 years, sell the car for $4,000 at the end. Total cost $11,000

Basically even if you own a very old worthless car it costs nothing to go to EV provided you either have savings or can get finance/loan

Only downside is that 10 year old EVs have poor range

I can help you find something if you are interested.
 
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