WIRED has written about Elon Musk, the man of the electric cars, space rockets, tunnel boring machines, implantable brain interfaces, Mars missionAnd internet shitpost—for a long time. He's always been unpredictable. And yet the most shocking part of his two hour interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, broadcast live on X earlier this week, could be just what Musk wanted not participation.
It happened around the 50-minute mark, during a very Trumpian discussion about gas and electricity prices. They had gone up nationwide, Trump said, but “if that goes down and [sic] We're gonna drill, baby, drill.”
The siren song of the oil and gas industry! Literally: Drill, baby, drill! And Musk, the one with the—I'll say it again—electric cars and the “saving the world” stuff, didn't show up until two minutes later, when he suggested that Trump was creating a “government efficiency commission” to curb government spending. Later, he and Trump had a brief conversation about the science of climate change. But Musk took pains to emphasize that the oil and gas industry is not the problem. “I'm pro-environment, but … I don't think we should be badmouthing the oil and gas industry because they're the ones that keep civilization going right now,” he said.
This felt like a departure. Musk has spent much of his career positioning himself as an environmentalist, sometimes going so far as to portray himself as the one man standing between the world and disaster. He has told Tesla's story in particular as a hero's journey to save the world by transitioning to a sustainable energy economy“I think objectively I am one of the leading environmentalists in the world in terms of doing things,” he said. at an Italian political event last december.
In 2017, Musk told Rolling Stone about the clear existential threat of climate change with a flair that still feels familiar. “Climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity this century, other than AI,” he said. “I keep telling people this. I hate to be Cassandra, but it's all fun and games until someone loses a fucking eye. This view [of climate change] is shared by almost everyone who isn't crazy in the scientific community.” Musk also has regularly accused critics of carry water for “fossil fuel companies.”
Oh, and think back to that time (June 2017) when Musk Three Trump presidential councils leave after the US withdrew from the Paris climate accords? “Climate change is real,” he said tweeted at the time. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
Musk's newer and weaker approach to climate not only reflects his very noisy embrace of far-right politics but also a new story he's telling about Tesla. Over the past few years, and especially now that talk of artificial intelligence has reached a fever pitch, Musk has positioned his electric-car maker as a game-changer robotic intelligencealso. In 2019, Musk announced that Tesla would have 1 million robotaxis on the road towards the end of the year. (It didn't.) Tesla is said to have recently shifted its resources from building a more affordable electric car, the mythical Model 2, to release a purpose-built robotaxieven though the company has yet to unveil any true self-driving technology. (A reveal event is scheduled for October.) Musk has repeatedly said that Tesla is an AI and robotics company and should be valued as such by investors. If Musk is backing off his support for climate change science, it’s fair to ask whether that’s related to his marketing spin for the world’s most valuable car company.