Bill McKibben calls Trump and Musk the 'dumbest' climate conversation ever

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica by email. Or Follow us on Google News!

---

Climate activist Bill McKibben wrote with horror and dismay over the X conversation that owner Elon Musk (“the richest person in the history of money”) shared with former US President Donald Trump (“gave his standard comment”) on Monday night. McKibben described the Trump and Musk exchange as “spreading the most absurd and dangerous disinformation about the greatest crisis the world has ever faced.”

In their old-school boy talk, the two billionaires both made rambling and misleading statements about climate pollution, rising sea levels, Big Oil and net-zero carbon emissions. Looking specifically at the way Trump and Musk discussed the climate crisis, McKibben summed it up as “they descended to completely new levels of stupidity.”

An activist, writer and professor, Bill McKibben helped found 350.org, the first global climate campaign that organized protests for climate action on every continent, including Antarctica.

To McKibbenThe climate crisis is “a time-sensitive emergency that must be addressed now and with full force.” The Billionaire Bros, however, agreed Monday night that the planet is not in immediate danger from humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels — if it is at all. “And yet here are these two careless fools,” McKibben wrote, “just rambling on about it.”

Trump and Musk have become friends at some point in the past months or years, and Musk a PAC created to bolster Trump's bid to retake the White House. Musk championed Tesla's electric vehicles to Trump and his supporters, who have largely failed to embrace zero-emission transportation. Trump admitted during Monday night's lovefest that he would no longer fight the transition. “Your cars don't need too much (sic) gasoline,” he told Musk. “You make a great product … That doesn't mean everyone should have an electric car, but these are small details, but your product is incredible.”

McKibben expanded on the climate points of the X conversation, saying that “insisting that nothing needs to be done now, that we just need to keep expanding the fossil fuel industry” is a sign of Trump’s ties to Big Oil. “Trump’s biggest financial backer after Elon may be Harold Hamm, the fracking billionaire,” McKibben revealed. “He took Trump up on his offer that he would give the oil industry whatever they wanted for a billion dollars, and he’s been on the phone with me ever since.”

Trump's shortsightedness on sea level rise

McKibben recounted how Trump spoke at the beginning of the X conference “about how it wasn't a problem if sea levels rose because it would just create 'more oceanfront real estate.'” McKibben called the comment “factually incorrect” and countered that “people around the Gulf are trying to figure out how to pay the skyrocketing insurance bills.” The number of significant flooding incidents has increased by 50 percent since the 1990s, affecting millions of U.S. residents. In Florida alone, several insurers have deserted policyholders due to the rising costs of flooding caused by rising sea levels and more intense storms.

McKibben argues: “We are now living in the hottest temperatures in 125,000 years; it is causing insane amounts of flooding and drought, fires and storms. The poles are melting. The latest study predicts that the great Atlantic Ocean currents will collapse between 2037 and 2064, with a median prediction of 2030.”

Despite Trump’s claims about new beaches, sea levels along the U.S. coastline are rising faster than the global average. Sea levels are expected to rise by 12 inches (30 centimeters) over the next 30 years, an increase equal to the total rise over the past century, according to U.S. government scientists. have found.

Musk's Changing Stance on the Climate Crisis

McKibben was particularly critical of Musk because Musk acknowledged during the X livecast that he has changed his “views on climate change and oil and gas, because I think I'm probably different than what most people would assume.”

McKibben called Musk “reckless.”

The Biden-Harris Administration's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Grant Program has given Tesla tremendous support. That’s led to more revenue for Tesla and greater brand appeal. Now Musk sees additional profit from a relationship with Trump and, by extension, Big Oil. How will that work?

“We want to transition to a sustainable energy economy over time,” Musk admitted, but then clarified, “because eventually you're going to run out of oil and gas.” Musk even went so far as to voice his support for Big Oil's efforts to get through the 100 years.

“I don't think we should be bashing the oil and gas industry and the people who have worked very hard in those industries to provide the energy needed to support the economy. And if we stopped using oil and gas now, we would all starve and the economy would collapse.”

It's all about the profit, honey.

McKibben rephrased Musk's comments. “What Musk is explaining here is that he didn't buy Tesla because he thought he could help solve global warming — he doesn't care about global warming at all because he doesn't think it's real.” Yes, it's clear now that Musk has changed his mind about the position he took Masterplan 1 in which he outlined the global need to transition from a “mine and burn” hydrocarbon economy to a solar electric economy. On Monday night, he outlined the existential risks of climate pollutionand said, “I don't think so, the risk is not as high as a lot of people say with regard to global warming.”

What happened to Musk 1.0? Remember how the Tesla CEO said in 2018 requested“Why not switch to renewable energy now and prevent [the] increasing risk of climate disaster? Betting that science is wrong and oil companies are right is by far the dumbest experiment in history.” Who looks dumb now?

During Monday night's X-space meeting, Musk gave a convoluted and imprecise breakdown of the cost per million it would take to make human breathing uncomfortable and when symptoms of headaches and nausea would occur.

“And so now we're up to 400. We're adding, I think about two parts per million per year. So, I mean, it still gives us, so what it means is we still have quite a bit of time, but so there's no such thing as, we don't have to rush and we don't have to stop farmers from farming or, you know, stop people from eating steaks or basic things like that.”

McKibben mused that there is no “serious climate scientist on planet Earth” who has ever suggested that a thousand parts per million is “anything less than panic and horror.” He noted how research has shown that once you have such high CO2 levels in buildings, “you can reduce our basic decision-making capacity by 25% and complex strategic thinking by about 50%.” So Musk seems to think that reduced cognitive ability is OK – as long as corporate profits are protected.

McKibben summarized Musk's climate position and motivations as follows:

“What Musk’s math implies, of course, is that we have an infinite amount of time to deal with this crisis. Why is Musk doing this? Who knows? After all, Tesla’s success is largely due to government subsidies that come from trying to slow the growth of carbon in the atmosphere. My only suspicion is that he hopes the world will become so barren that we’ll just have to foot the bill for his big trip to Mars.”

Main photo: No to climate death! Through Alisdare Hickson (CC BY-SA 2.0 license)