Is Elon Musk An Environmentalist Any More?

The greenest thing about Musk might be this shirtPhoto: SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP (Getty Images)

Elon Musk cares about the environment — at least, he wants you to think he does. He’ll tell you that he founded an electric car company, that he’s working to make solar power accessible and affordable, that he wants to bring humanity to newer and greater heights, but is any of it true? Well, it’s a tough question to answer.

Tesla’s Cybertruck Has Finally Arrived

At some point, it seems like Musk may really have cared about going green. His tweets from the pre-Covid era often talk about climate change as an existential threat, one that requires immediate and swift action to mitigate. Sure, he may have mixed a little union busting in even back then, but the Musk of olde cared about our planet. As his discussion this week with Donald Trump proves, however, Musk has truly changed his mind.

Electrek reviewed Trump and Musk’s climate claims on their glitch-riddled call, complete with factual takedowns of each point. Musk claimed CO2 levels aren’t a concern until they reach headache-inducing levels — wrong. He downplayed the gas’s effects on the climate as a whole — wrong. Musk even claimed that the fossil fuel industry isn’t to blame — not only wrong, but a major departure from his prior stance.

Even beyond that single interview, Musk’s views on the environment have shifted. While old tweets talked about climate change as a threat, newer tweets claim it’s “tracking to be solved.” Musk has said that “what happens on Earth’s surface … has no meaningful impact on climate change,” and that “climate change definitely will not end the world as we know it.”

When it comes to a future for white children, Musk still takes the existential approach — donating tens of millions of dollars in hopes of raising birth rates, on the off chance that population collapse is a real thing that exists and definitely not just because he fears of losing all that sweet sweet racial purity. He used to take that very same approach to climate change, saying that “there is only one atmosphere,” but it seems he’s moved on to new concerns.

Musk may still occasionally gesture toward environmentalism, but the passion and fervor he once held is gone. He no longer cares about it as his primary cause the way he did just six years ago, having instead moved on to bigger, weirder things. Elon Musk is no longer an environmentalist.