WIRED has written about Elon Musk for a long time, about his electric cars, space rockets, tunnel-boring machines, brain-implanted interfaces, Mars exploration, and internet posts. He’s always been unpredictable. But the most shocking thing about his two-hour interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, broadcast live on X earlier this week, was how Musk I didn’t say.
It came around the 50-minute mark, during a very Trumpian discussion of gas and electricity prices. Rates are going up across the country, Trump said, but “when they come down, we’ll drill, baby, we’ll drill.”
The siren song of the oil and gas industry! Literally: Drill, baby, drillAnd once again, Musk, the man behind electric cars and his “save the world” mantra, didn’t speak until a full two minutes after suggesting Trump set up a “Government Efficiency Commission” to rein in government spending. He and Trump then had a brief exchange about the science of climate change. But Musk stressed that the oil and gas industry isn’t the problem. “I’m an environmentalist, but I don’t think we should blame the oil and gas industry, because they’re the ones keeping civilization going right now,” he said.
It seemed like a change of direction. Musk has spent much of his career as a champion for environmental protection, at times even portraying himself as the only person standing between the world and disaster, telling Tesla’s story in particular as a hero’s journey to save the world through the transition to a sustainable energy economy. “Objectively, I think I’m one of the leading environmentalists in the world in terms of drive,” Musk said at a political event in Italy last December.
In 2017, Musk told Rolling Stone magazine in a tone that still sounds familiar: climate change is clearly an existential threat. “Climate change is the biggest threat humanity faces this century, aside from AI,” he said. “I keep telling people this: Sorry to sound like Cassandra here, but it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. This view[on climate change]is shared by just about everyone in the scientific community who isn’t crazy.” Musk also frequently accuses his critics of siding with “fossil fuel companies.”
Oh, remember when Musk resigned from three of President Trump’s presidential advisory councils after the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Agreement in June 2017? “Climate change is real,” he tweeted at the time. “Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would not be good for the U.S. or the world.”
Musk’s new, ambivalent approach to climate change reflects not only his vocal support for far-right politics, but also the new story he tells about Tesla. In recent years, especially as the debate over artificial intelligence reached its peak, Musk has also positioned his electric car maker as a pioneer of robotic intelligence. In 2019, Musk announced that Tesla would have one million robotaxis on the road by the end of the year (it did not happen). More recently, Tesla has reportedly shifted resources from manufacturing its more affordable electric car, the legendary Model 2, to launching a dedicated robotaxi, but the company has yet to reveal its true self-driving technology (a launch event is planned for October). Musk has repeatedly said that Tesla is an AI and robotics company and that investors should value it as such. If Musk were to back away from his support for climate change science, it’s only natural to wonder if it has something to do with a change in marketing for the world’s most valuable car company.
