Elon Musk is introducing his new right-wing fans to the idea of implementing a carbon tax, and it goes about as well as you would expect.
Elon Musk is introducing his new right-wing fans to the idea of implementing a carbon tax, and it goes about as well as you would expect.
Elon Musk is introducing his new right-wing fans to the idea of implementing a carbon tax, and it goes about as well as you would expect.
Over the last few years, Musk has become a sort of hero of the right.
Regardless of where you stand politically, it is a fascinating situation. I remember not too long ago when the right consistently attacked him for taking advantage of government subsidies at his companies.
A few years later, he buys Twitter, reinstates some previously banned conservative accounts, makes fun of Joe Biden and other democrats, starts to talk about “wokeness” and illegal immigration consistently, and now he is loved by the right.
Through this period, the once zealot climate change warrior who quit President Trump’s business council because he withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, started talking a lot less about climate change and Tesla’s mission to accelerate to world’s transition to renewable energy.
On top of running six different companies, Tesla’s CEO is virtually a full-time political influencer now.
It is creating an interesting situation. For the first time in a while, Musk decided to use his massively popular X account to promote an idea perceived as left-wing (even though it shouldn’t be political): a carbon tax.
Musk wrote:
Musk has been pushing the idea of a carbon tax for a long time, and it’s interesting to see him introducing the idea to his new right-wing fans.
As you can imagine, it didn’t go too well.
Most of the top-voted comments underneath his post were responses that were quite negative. Here are a few examples
:I had to go down about 50 responses to see a positive response to Musk’s comment. It appears that for better or worse, Musk’s X profile is now dominated by his new right-wing fans.
Electrek’s Take
I am the first to admit that a carbon tax is difficult to implement correctly. In theory, it makes a ton of sense. In fact, free-market conservatives should love it since it fixes the market.
A free market only works if it’s fair and all external costs are accounted for. If external costs are not accounted for, the market becomes inefficient and fails.
A carbon tax accounts for the external costs of emitting carbon. It fixes the market inefficiency – making the true costs (including environmental) accounted for in the costs of the products. The products best for the environment would come up on top.
Now, to agree with that, you need to agree with the vast majority of environmental scientists who say that humanity’s carbon production is contributing to the acceleration of the Earth’s warming.
Yes, the climate has always naturally changed for billions of years, but it doesn’t mean that humans starting to pump billions of metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year is not accelerating it. The data looks clear.
Don't fall into the trap of "carbon". Don't fall into the trap of "rapidly warming". The earth is still sending exponentially more heat and "carbon" into an atmosphere that is actually at a low amount of carbon currently. Repeating what "virtually all climate scientists" say is dangerous because they get exponentially more money claiming climate change than by denying it.
If you want to say the globe must commit to the same carbon tax (and again, why carbon?? Because it is the only thing we measure??), then you have to have China, India and other nations first catch up to what Western countries have already done with our scrubbers and government over-regulations, so that everyone is on the same page, then tax away anything you deem excessive. But China, India, etc have zero incentive to do that, as they now have far better market economies because they don't do what Western countries do. This is not a simple thing, and it is consistently oversimplified to scare people into throwing soup onto classic works of art or disrupting commutes. We are a world of idiots, and we let the most idiotic take charge. It's sad, really.
The data looks clear on just who is fooling who.
Any data on where this "carbon tax" $$$$$ ends up? That bit of info seems to seldom get answered.
The entire subject is ridiculous. Anybody attaching themselves to this crazy tyrannical taxation crime does not truly understand the problem, or simply changes their narrative as the interviewer/audience is changed.
I call B.S.
Onward, Christian soldiers!