Building Tesla
Accelerating the removal of hydrocarbons from the crust and placing them in the atmosphere is unwise. This is one of the biggest problems of the twenty-first century.
Hopefully this transition to sustainable energy occurs before it’s too late.464
The Mission to Protect the Planet
There’s no way we can conserve our way to a good future. We have to make energy sustainable.465
Q: Why is the mission of Tesla so important to you?
The overarching purpose of Tesla is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy toward a solar-electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution.466
Energy output is the foundation of the economy, just like sunlight is the foundation of the ecosystem. To a first approximation, a country’s goods and services production will be proportionate to its energy output.467
By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway, and that virtually all scientists agree dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane…the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.468
I don’t have any fundamental dislike of hydrocarbons. I simply look at the future and say, “What is the thing that will actually work?” Using a nonrenewable resource obviously will not work.469
There are time extensions on the game, but the game is going to end eventually. That should be obvious. If we rely on nonrenewables, it’s like we’re stuck in a room where the oxygen is gradually depleting. We want to get out of that room. The sooner we get out of that room, the better.470
Q: How do you respond to people who don’t see the problem with extraction?
It is dangerous to be extracting vast quantities of hydrocarbons from deep within the earth and putting them in the atmosphere. Sooner or later, something bad will happen. There are a lot of people, particularly in the US, who are vehemently against electric cars and sustainable energy. It’s quite difficult to reason with them.
They’ll say, “Well, some scientists don’t think climate change is a problem.”471
You can find some small number of people that will disagree with anything.
This reminds me of the tobacco industry. For the longest time you’d see ads where they claimed tobacco was healthy for you. It’s hard to believe these days, but it’s true.
There were reports where there seemed to be a correlation between lung cancer and smoking, but tobacco companies would say, “Our scientists have conducted experiments and they show no relation at all!” It’s complete nonsense.472
Almost any reasonable scientist would say, “Yes, of course smoking causes lung cancer and all sorts of other bad things. Not definitively but it’s extremely likely.” Yet the tobacco industry would still say, “Scientists disagree!” because 1 or 2 percent of the scientific community didn’t feel that way.
The public just hears “Scientists disagree!” rather than “99 percent of scientists think the other 1 percent are stupid.”473
The question isn’t, “Can you prove we’re making the planet warmer?” but, “Can you prove we’re not?” And you can’t.474
It makes me mad when smart, ethical scientists are accused of publishing climate papers for “grant money.” They earn peanuts compared to their other opportunities and give that up to help the world. But their accusers earn billions by slowing down the growth of clean energy. Who is more credible?475
People often believe things inversely proportional to the evidence. It’s so strange.
Given a set of possible explanations, why pick the extremely unlikely one?476
Q: So it’s not too late to turn things around?
Humanity will solve sustainable energy if we continue to push hard. The future is bright for cheap, abundant energy. It will be possible to use that energy to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. It takes a lot of energy to do that carbon capture, because putting it into the atmosphere releases energy. To pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy.
But if we’ve got a lot of sustainable energy from wind and solar, we can sequester carbon. We can reverse the CO2 parts per million of the atmosphere and oceans and restore the climate.477
I donated $100 million to a prize for the best carbon capture technology.
We can create as much fresh water as we want. Earth is mostly water. We should call Earth “Water.” It’s 70 percent water by surface area. We just happen to be on the small bit that’s land. With energy, we can turn ocean water into fresh water or irrigation water at low cost.478
When you burn fossil fuels, there’s all these side reactions and toxic gasses of various kinds. A lot of little particulates that are bad for your lungs. All sorts of bad things are happening, which will go away with sustainable energy. The sky will be cleaner and quieter. The future is going to be good.479
The purpose of Tesla was, and remains, accelerating the use of sustainable energy, so we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly hippie thing—it matters for everyone.480