Climate Experts Rebuke Musk Over 'Dumbest' Interview With Trump

DONALD & ELON SHOW - Elon Musk thinks he knows more about climate issues than the entire staff of a major international newspaper, but on Wednesday, experts on the planetary emergency offered the billionaire businessman a reality check.

Responding to a Guardian article critical of Monday's glitch- and lie-laden interview of former U.S. President Donald Trump on Musk's X social media platform, Musk proclaimed that "my little fingernail knows more about climate issues than the entire staff of The Guardian."

Bill McKibben, who co-founded the climate action group 350.org, is quoted in that article calling the Musk-Trump interview "the dumbest climate conversation of all time." 

Responding to Musk's diss, McKibben said Wednesday on X that he would "be pleased to debate you (or your little fingernail) at any point about why we don't, in fact, have a century to spare in solving this crisis." 

Climate scientist Michael Mann, who calls Musk a "climate denier" in the Guardian piece, also weighed in, telling Musk on X that "if you've got a beef, take it up with me."

Some X users noted that once upon a time, Musk—who is the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla—acknowledged the urgency of the climate crisis. In 2018, he said: "Why not go renewable now and avoid [the] increasing risk of climate catastrophe? Betting that science is wrong and oil companies are right, is the dumbest experiment in history, by far." 

In an opinion piece published Tuesday by Common Dreams, McKibben noted that after Musk—who endorsed Trump and created a pro-Trump super political action committee—the former president's biggest funder may be fracking billionaire Harold Hamm. 

"He took Trump up on his offer that for a billion dollars he'd give the oil industry whatever it wanted, and he's been working the phones ever since," McKibben wrote of Hamm. 

Trump returned the favor by calling Hamm "so boring to be with... because all he wants to talk about is oil and gas."

During his first White House run, Trump infamously called climate change "a Chinese hoax." He staffed his administration with climate deniers and rolled back previous administrations' climate policies under the "drill, baby, drill" mantra popularized by former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

"Why is Musk doing this?" McKibben asked. "Who knows? After all, the success of Tesla has been mostly driven by government subsidy that grows out of the effort to slow the growth of carbon in the atmosphere."

"My only conjecture," McKibben added, "is that he hopes the world will become barren enough that we simply have to pony up for his big trip to Mars."

(Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams where this was first published.)