Elon Musk, best known for owning an electric car company and saying he wants to bring humanity into a “sustainable energy civilization,” told former President Donald Trump in an interview with The oil and gas industry should not be maligned.
Musk interviewed Trump on his social media platform, and the live broadcast was delayed by more than 40 minutes due to technical difficulties. After long, aimless discussions about immigration, inflation and foreign policy, Musk and Trump finally broached the topic of energy and climate change — and, surprisingly, Musk did it for the fossil fuel industry defend.
“I don’t think we should denigrate the oil and gas industry and the people who work hard in these industries to provide the necessary energy to support the economy,” Musk said.
“People who work very hard in these industries”
Despite owning an electric vehicle and home energy company, the Tesla CEO described his views on energy as “pretty dovish” and claimed the economy “will collapse” if oil and gas companies are forced to shut down. Musk also said that despite warnings from the scientific community that humans are rapidly reaching a climate tipping point, the Earth can transition to a sustainable energy economy in “50 or 100 years.” (Trump later changed that to “500 to 1,000 years,” and Musk did not correct it.)
“So the house doesn’t catch on fire right away,” Musk said. “But I think that’s where we need to be moving towards… moving faster is probably better than moving slower. But like not maligning the oil and gas industry and not causing hardship in the short term.
But he soon contradicted himself. Musk acknowledged that as fossil fuels continue to be used, the air will become difficult to breathe, causing people “headaches and nausea.” But this is no reason to quickly abandon the use of planetary heating fuels. According to Musk, we can easily move into a more sustainable future.
“We still have a lot of time,” he said. “We don’t need to rush.”
Trump often sounds like he’s being coy, quipping that rising sea levels will mean people will have more “waterfront property.” The comments were quickly blasted by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
Trump then briefly touched on one of his favorite topics – electric vehicles, claiming Tesla cars are powered by fossil fuel electricity. “[We] There’s no getting away from it at the moment,” he said.
But despite Trump’s vow to end subsidies for plug-in cars, which could severely impact Tesla’s sales, the discussion of electric vehicles hasn’t gone much further than that. Trump urged Musk to install solar panels on the roof of his car. (Tesla applied for a patent for a solar panel-covered rear hatch for the Cybertruck, but did not follow up.)
“People talk about global warming, or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” Trump said. “A looming problem.”
