Headaches and Nausea – Elon Musk and Donald Trump
“I knew immediately that it was a bullet. I knew immediately that it was at the ear. And because it hit very hard, but hit the ear. And I also heard people shout, bullets, bullets, get down, get down. Because I moved down pretty nicely, pretty quickly.”
This is an extract of the transcript of the interview between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The full transcript and audio is HERE. This section covers their views on climate change. It’s full of misinformation and wildly ignorant understanding of basic facts. Bill McKibben called it ‘The Dumbest Climate Conversation of All Time’.
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I should probably say something about like, you know, maybe my views on, you know, climate change and oil and gas, because I think I’m probably different from what most people would assume.
Because my views are actually pretty, I think moderate in this regard, which is that I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry and the people that have worked very hard in those industries to provide the necessary energy to support the economy. And if we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse. So it’s, you know, I don’t think it’s right to sort of vilify the oil and gas industry.
And I, you know, the world has a certain demand for oil and gas and it’s probably better if the United States provides that than some other countries. And it would help with prosperity in the US. And at the same time, obviously my view is like, we do over time wanna move to a sustainable energy economy because eventually you do run out of, I mean, you run out of oil and gas.
It’s not there, it’s not infinite. And there is some risk. I think it’s not, the risk is not as high as, you know, a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming.
But I think if you just keep increasing the cost per million in the atmosphere long enough, eventually it actually simply gets uncomfortable to breathe. People don’t realize this. If you go past a thousand parts per million of CO2, you start getting headaches and nausea.
And so we’re now in the sort of 400 range. We’re adding, I think about roughly two parts per million per year. So, I mean, it still gives us, so what it means is like, we still have quite a bit of time, but so there’s not like, we don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that.
Like leave the farmers alone.
Donald Trump
I agree. How crazy is that where, I mean, you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle and the whole world is a little crazy, but it’s largely taken its lead from us. I do say though, I’ve heard in terms of the fossil fuel, because even to create your electric car and create the electricity needed for the electric car, you know, fossil fuel is what really creates that at the generating plants.
And, you know, so you sort of can’t get away from it at this moment. I mean, someday you might be able to, but I do hear we have anywhere from 100 to 500 years left. You know, much of it hasn’t even been found yet, but there are tremendous, like ANWR.
I got ANWR in Alaska approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it.
Everybody tried. Nobody could do it. I got it approved.
The first thing that Biden did was unimprove it to get rid of it. He ended it. His secretary went in and she ended it.
And what a disgrace. That’s ANWR. That’s bigger, or they think it could be bigger than Saudi Arabia in Alaska.
Could be bigger than Saudi Arabia, but they went in and they terminated it. And I’ll get it going very quickly because not only is it big for Alaska, I mean, you talk about economic development, that for the United States, I mean, that is, they say bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size and pure, really good stuff. And, you know, they end it.
So I think we have, you know, perhaps hundreds of years left. Nobody really knows. But during that time, something will come around that will be very good.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Well, I mean, my estimate would be, you know, a little more aggressive than that, but it’s not the sort of like, we’re all gonna die in five years stuff. That’s obviously BS.
But I mean, my view is like, if you just look at sort of the parts per million that increments every year, you know, you get sort of two or three parts per million every year of CO2. I mean, I think some of that, it’s problematic if it accelerates, if you start going from two or three to say five. And then there may be some situations where you get a step change increase in the CO2.
And I think we don’t wanna get too close to 1000 PPM because like that’s actually makes it uncomfortable to breathe. Like just existing in 1000 PPM CO2 is uncomfortable. That’s like a, that’s considered like an industrial hazard.
Just so it’s, you know, that’s actually, you start getting headaches and stuff. So it’s even without global warming, it’s not comfortable to live. So you don’t wanna get too close to that.
But I mean, I think we’ve got, I think we wanna just move over. And like if, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, we’re, I don’t know, mostly sustainable. I think that’ll probably be okay.
So it’s not like the house is on fire immediately, but I think it is something we need to move towards. And on, you know, on balance, it’s probably better to move there faster than slower. But like I said, without vilifying the oil and gas industry and without causing hardship in the short term, I think this can be done with without, you know, people can still have, you know, a steak and they can still drive gasoline cars.
And this, you know, it’s okay. It’s like, it’s not, I don’t think we should vilify people first, but I think we should just generally lean in the direction of sustainability. And I actually think solar is gonna be a majority of earth’s energy generation in the future.
And it’s certainly trending that way. And so you get the solar power, mind that with batteries. So because obviously the sun doesn’t shine at night and then you use that to charge the electric cars and you have a long-term sustainable solution.
And, you know, that’s what Tesla is trying to move things towards. And I think we’ve made a lot of progress in that regard. But when you look at our cars, like we don’t believe that environmentalism, that caring about the environment should mean that you have to suffer.
So we make sure that our cars are beautiful, that they drive well, that they’re fast, they’re, you know, sexy. I mean, they’re cool. In fact, literally, I mean, the sexy joke, Model S, Model 3, Model X and Y spells out sexy.
It’s probably the most expensive joke out there. But I, you know, I just, I don’t know, I like cheesy humor, you know? So, but I’m a big fan of like, let’s have an inspiring future and let’s work towards, you know, a better future.
And we can do so without demonizing people. Right, I’m okay.
Donald Trump
You know, it’s very interesting. You use the word global warming and today they use the word climate change because, you know, you have some places that go up and so they were getting themselves in a little trouble with the word global warming because not every place is warming. Some places are going the opposite direction.
But, you know, I’m sort of waiting for you to come up with solar panels on the roofs of your cars and on the trunks of the cars. And it just seems like something that at some point you will come up with. I’m sure you’ll be the first, but it would seem that a solar panel on the roofs, you know, on flat surfaces, on certain surfaces might be good, at least in certain areas of the country where you have the, or the world where you have the sun.
But I would think, and I have no idea because that’s not my world, but I would think that this would be something that would be interesting. But, you know, the one thing that I don’t understand is that people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming. And for me, that’s an immediate problem because you have, as I said, five countries where you have major nuclear and, you know, probably some others are getting there and that’s very dangerous.
That’s where you need a strong American president because you just, you don’t want to have this proliferation. But you have five countries and getting more, you know, China is much less than us right now, but they’re gonna catch us sooner than people think. They’re way lower.
Russia and us are number one and we’re sort of tied and China is far behind, but they’re developing at a level that, you know, you’re not surprised to hear, very fast. It’s gonna, they’ll end up catching up, maybe even surpassing. But to me, the biggest problem is not climate change.
It’s not, and everything’s, you know, a problem, but it’s degrees. To me, the big problem is the nuclear power. The power of nuclear is so great.
And when I talk about, I’ll prevent World War III, I will, but the truth is that you have to because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other. This is a level of destruction and power that nobody’s ever seen before.
Elon Musk
Yeah, and actually, there’s the bad side of nuclear, which is a nuclear war, very bad side. But there’s also, I think, nuclear electricity generation is underrated. And it’s actually, you know, people have this fear of nuclear electricity generation, but it’s actually one of the safest forms of electricity generation.
It’s just a huge misunderstanding. And if you look at the injuries and deaths caused by, say, I mean, I’m not gonna try to pick on coal mining, but just any kind of mining operation. And there’s a certain number of injuries and deaths per year.
I mean, you compare that to nuclear, nuclear is actually way better. So it’s underrated as an electricity source. And I think it’s something that’s worth reconsidering, but there’s so much regulation that people can’t get it done.
Donald Trump
Maybe they’ll have to change the name. The name is just, it’s a rough name. There are some areas, like when you see what happened- Bad branding, the branding problem. We’ll have to rebrand it.
We’ll have to give it a good name. We’ll name it after you or something. You know, hey, it has a branding problem.
You know, when you see what happened- It does have a branding problem. When you see what happened in Japan, where they say you won’t be able to go on the land for about 3,000 years. Did you ever see that?
And in Russia, where they had the problem, where they, you know, there’s a lot of bad things happened. They have a problem. And they say that in 2,000 years, people will start to occupy the land again.
You know, you realize it’s pretty bad.
Elon Musk
No, that’s not true.
Donald Trump
But there’s- You’re right about it.
Elon Musk
It’s the basics. It’s actually not that bad. So like after Fukushima happened in Japan, like people were asking me in California, you know, are we worried about like a nuclear cloud coming from Japan?
I’m like, no, that’s crazy. It’s actually, it’s not even dangerous in Fukushima. I actually flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it.
And I donated a solar water treatment, yeah, it’s a solar powered system for a water treatment plant.
Donald Trump
Yeah, but you haven’t been feeling so well lately and I’m worried about it.
Elon Musk
No, no, but I mean- I’m only kidding. It’s fine, you know. It’s like, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re like full cities again.
So it’s really not something that, you know.
Donald Trump
That’s great.
Elon Musk
So it’s not as scary as people think basically, but let’s see. I mean, are there some other topics we should touch on? Oh, you know, like lawfare.
I think, you know, we need to be concerned about- What they’ve done to this country. Obviously.
Life is too short to read or listen to their nonsense.
Delerium
The blind leading the blind.
Heaven help us!
Worth reading Bill McKibben’s take down of the interview here
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-climate-conversation
Good grief. And there was me thinking Trump was an outlier.
See also: https://heated.world/p/a-line-by-line-fact-check-of-the
Scary stuff ! Thank God very few people would support these two morons ….Oh, wait !
Jesus fucking Christ. Biggest assholes on the planet.