Anika Begay
WIRED has been writing about Elon Musk, the man behind electric cars, space rockets, tunnel-boring machines, implantable brain interfaces, a mission to Mars, and Internet shitposting, for a long time. He has always been unpredictable. Yet the most shocking part of his two-hour interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, broadcast live on X earlier this week, may have been exactly what Musk he didn’t do it Say.
It happened around the 50th minute, during a very Trumpian discussion about gas and electricity prices. They were rising nationwide, Trump said, but “when they come down and [sic] “We have to drill, darling, drill.”
The siren song of the oil and gas industry! Literally: Drill, honey, drill! And Musk, the one who is all about — again — electric cars and “saving the world,” didn’t speak until two minutes later, when he suggested Trump create a “government efficiency commission” to rein in government spending. Later, he and Trump had a brief exchange about the science of climate change. But Musk was at 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 vilifying the oil and gas industry, because they’re holding civilization up right now,” he said.
It seemed like a departure. Musk has spent much of his career portraying himself as a champion of the environment, sometimes painting himself as the only man standing between the world and disaster. He has told the story of Tesla, in particular, as a hero’s journey to save the world through a transition to a sustainable energy economy. “I think I am objectively one of the world’s leading environmentalists in terms of concrete actions,” he said at an Italian political event last December.
In 2017, Musk spoke to Rolling Stone about the clear existential threat of climate change in a way that still feels familiar. “Climate change is the greatest threat humanity faces this century, except for artificial intelligence,” he said. “I keep telling people that. I hate to be Cassandra here, but it’s all fun and games until someone loses a fucking eye. This vision [of climate change] is shared by almost everyone who isn’t crazy in the scientific community.” Musk has also regularly accused critics of hauling water for “fossil fuel companies.”
Oh, and remember that time (June 2017) when Musk resigned from three of Trump’s presidential advisories after the U.S. pulled out of the Paris climate accord? “Climate change is real,” he tweeted at the time. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
Musk’s new, inconsistent approach to climate reflects not only his outspoken support for far-right politics but also a new story he’s telling about Tesla. In recent years, and especially as AI chatter has reached fever pitch, Musk has positioned his electric-car maker as a pioneer in robotic intelligence, too. In 2019, Musk announced that Tesla would have 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of the year. (It didn’t.) More recently, Tesla has reportedly shifted resources from building a more affordable electric car, the fabled Model 2, to launching a purpose-built robotaxi, though the company has yet to reveal any actual 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 abandoning his support for climate change science, it’s reasonable to wonder whether it’s related to his marketing strategy for the world’s most valuable automaker.
