Elon Musk has made fighting climate change cool. Why do some on the left hate him?
I thought this article on the passionate dislike some on the left have for Elon Musk was very illuminating. His acquisition of Twitter has taken that dislike to a whole new level. From the outset, it is important to note how narrow and insular those on the left who dislike him are. The article points out that normal, non-Twitter dwelling Democrats actually view him favorably, similar to Republicans. Once again, those who are most active on Twitter do not speak for anyone but themselves.
What is surprising to some about the left’s dislike for Musk is that it comes despite what he has done for climate change, a cause people on the left are all but unanimously concerned with. He has made electric cars cool. He has taken them from being a rich environmentalist’s plaything to mainstream. Now, other car companies are playing catch up. One would think the left would love him for having done that, hence the surprise of how disliked he is.
The dislike though is only surprising if you think that those on the left are truly concerned with fighting climate change above all else. Once you realize that many left-wingers have a vision for society that is much broader than carbon emission reductions and that Musk is undermining that, then it makes more sense. The below passage explains that:
“I think many people are attracted to climate solutions because they promise not just less carbon, but also a more equitable, democratic and just society. The fact that the greatest electric car manufacturer in the world is a libertarian edgelord billionaire rather than, say, a worker owned co-op, flies in the face of that,” said Jamie Henn, a veteran climate activist and communications consultant.
Much of the environmental movement is not just on the left, but far left. They are not just environmental groups and activists, but all-around left-wingers on every issue. Their worldview is much more collective than most people and part of why they want to reduce carbon emissions is because they think it will mean a large increase in the role of government and a decrease in activities they do not like. By making fighting climate change a for-profit activity, Musk has undermined that. Fighting climate change does not require the dismantling of capitalism and living like we did in the 1800s.
With the success of electric cars, people will still drive like they do now. It will just be done via electricity and not gasoline. I think that is great. Selling the cause of fighting climate change has long been difficult in part because it is often associated with imposing lower living standards on everyone. The belief that the economy and carbon emissions have to rise and fall together is completely wrong, but environmental groups have largely embraced it to the detriment of the causes they claim to believe in.
What Musk is proving is that we can reduce carbon emissions and improve our living standards. That is how the fight against climate change will be won. It is never going to happen that we are all going to agree to stop driving and to no longer use electricity or household appliances. It is also not going to happen that we are going to abolish for-profit businesses and make everything worker co-ops or government-run collectives.
You can see the same phenomenon in the opposition of environmental groups and left-wingers to nuclear power. Nuclear power produces electricity that is 100% clean, just as that crowd claims to want. What nuclear power does not do is require us to change our lifestyles. We can still use electricity to our hearts’ content and do not have to live in tiny units and ride bikes everywhere. For Malthusians who think economic growth is bad and energy use is evil, nuclear power undermines their grand vision.
The environmental crowd and left-wingers in general need to understand three things when it comes to climate change. One, fighting climate change by promoting clean energy is a goal that can be accomplished. We can have clean energy on a huge scale, much more so than we have now. Two, this will not be accomplished by burning everything down and having us all become socialists. If people are told that they can either care about climate change or become socialists, they will not care about climate change. Three, successfully selling clean energy will require working with people who are not especially concerned about climate change. Environmental preaching, especially when it is apocalyptic, is a guaranteed way to repel them.
The passage below highlights another problem with much of the left and particularly some environmental groups:
Alex Trembath, deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute, which promotes technological solutions to climate change, says Musk makes some progressives and others on the left uncomfortable because he forces them to confront the inconvenient truth that solving climate change will require them to engage with Americans they find objectionable.
The desire to only interact with perfectly like-minded people is not unique to the left, but it is a problem many of them are guilty of and is very counterproductive to getting things done. The US is a big country with lots of different people. Many if not most environmental groups and left-wingers are in big cities. There is nothing wrong with that, but not everyone lives there. People living in other places are going to have different concerns than them. That hardly means cooperation is impossible.
Working with people who have different concerns will mean having to listen to them. There are plenty of areas where common ground can be found on promoting clean energy. But it will not be by forcing the Green New Deal on everyone nor will it be by banning fracking, blocking pipelines or shutting down nuclear plants. Thinking that the only way climate change can be solved is by ripping everything up and forcing everyone to make major lifestyle changes is not just false and never going to work, it is also a failure of imagination.
How can it be possible to fight climate change when Republicans often do not care about it? By giving them reasons besides climate change to support clean energy. In fact, there are Republicans in Congress who are pushing for things that would advance clean energy. For example, right now, oil and gas drilling is exempt from the environmental review requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act while geothermal drilling is not. Giving geothermal drilling the same exemption could go a long way towards making it a much more common source of energy. Guess who has sponsored legislation to give it that exemption? Two members of the congressional delegation from Idaho, both of whom are Republicans. That is not because they are secret supporters of the Green New Deal. It is because geothermal drilling would be great for business in their state. That is who environmental groups are going to have to work with if they really want to fight climate change.
Working with disparate groups on climate change is not theoretical. It has happened before. Did you know that in 2020 a major energy bill was passed? It was the biggest climate change bill passed in a long time, possibly ever. It included the phaseout of hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas, along with money for renewable energy and energy efficiency. Who were the big sponsors of it? Not Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, but Lisa Murkowski, John Kennedy and John Barrasso, all Republicans. It was signed by Trump. I don’t blame you for not having heard of it. It got very little media attention, which is how the effort to promote clean energy will likely go down if it is successful.
The problem that poses for many environmental groups and left-wingers is that it does not generate headlines. It does not get much media attention and is not good for riling people up to give money and put on a show. But it is effective and that is the rub. The most effective tactics for riling people up and getting attention are usually the least effective for actually getting things done. That requires painstaking work with all kinds of different groups, which is not exciting and will not fire up anyone’s passions or generate headlines.
Environmental groups and left-wingers have to decide what they want to prioritize. If it is reducing carbon emissions that they truly care about, then they are going to have to give up their broader ambitions. In general, whatever someone’s goal is, it is critical to try to build as broad a coalition as possible to support it. Building a coalition to support clean energy is going to involve working with people who are not left-wingers living in big cities. If the message coming from environmental groups and left-wingers is that anyone who wants to support clean energy has to sign on to the full left-wing agenda, they can forget about clean energy. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.
The potential to do great work on reducing carbon emissions is absolutely there. But successfully getting there is going to require a change in tactics and strategy. Environmental groups and left-wingers are going to have to take off their ideological straightjackets. They will need to do a lot less talking and a lot more listening. Screaming at the top of their lungs while making obscene demands is a great way to lose. If the goal is to just get attention and raise money, that works, but not if the goal is to actually do anything of substance.
If I was going to believe a conspiracy theory
I am not a believer in conspiracy theories and am usually a subscriber to Occam’s Razor. But if I was going to believe in a conspiracy, it would probably be out about Elon Musk and his antagonism of left-wingers. The article I linked to earlier quotes a Democratic elected official joking that he does that to make right-wingers want to buy Teslas. If I was going to be a conspiracy theorist it would be believing that. His upsetting left-wingers is a deliberate ploy to fight climate change by getting right-wingers to do environmentally good things just so they can antagonize people they do not like. That is some 20-dimensional chess.
Musk has views that nobody can really categorize. He has been a supporter of the ACLU and claims to have supported Obama. He did not like Trump, but does not like Biden either. He often calls himself a libertarian, but that is entirely situational. Tesla has received plenty of government money and SpaceX’s sole client is the US government. He is concerned about climate change and has supported taxing carbon emissions. At the same time, he was heavily dismissive about the pandemic and flirted with anti-vaxxers (he is vaccinated). He has also moved out of California and bashed it many times, a favorite past time of right-wingers.
Knowing all that, it would make perfect sense that his flirtation and newfound friendship with right-wingers is all part of the plan. He is concerned about and wants to fight climate change. He is also a businessman and wants to make money. How to maximally advance both of those? By selling electric cars and pissing off left-wingers so that right-wingers will buy them! Left-wingers are going to buy electric cars no matter what, but right-wingers might be a harder sell. What better way to get them to buy electric cars than to antagonize the same people they do not like? Buy electric cars to own the libs!
I tend to think how he acts is itself an act, but I am not sure which part is real and which is not. The contrast between how he acts when dealing with the governments of the US and China is telling. He is very antagonistic when dealing with the US government, especially the SEC. He has no filter and tweets about whatever pops into his head. How does he act when dealing with the CCP? He is a completely different person. He dresses professionally, acts professionally and never says a single bad word about them. In all seriousness, God bless America because here you can act that way towards the government and not have to worry about disappearing in the middle of the night.
Tesla sells many cars in China and China is a dictatorship so, naturally, he never says anything bad about the CCP. What I am not clear on is which one is real and which is the act? Is it the blowhard we see in the US or the ass kisser we see in China? To paraphrase Eminem, will the real Elon Musk please stand up?