Elon Musk’s private jet emitted 1,895 tons of CO2 in 2022 – ElonJet Wrapped 2022
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* edit: I forget down voting is a thing. Why I thought i was clear from the start: If someone actually cared about their private jet privacy they would be renting jets... Cause its common knowledge that one can be tracked publicly with ownership information. Or he could push for a change in gov policies, he certainly doesn't mind sharing his political opinion now.
Let us take a foreign trip to Norway. A friendly allied country with a low threat profile.
4 - 6 weeks prior to travel a team flies in to plan the route, mitigate problems, update schedules and demand accommodations from the host country.
Weld your manhole covers shut, empty out floors on some buildings. have all traffic stopped in a radius of X miles, etc etc Same with the hotel, the venue etc etc.
The closer we get more aids, vehicles, infrastructure air airlifted in.
The flight with POTUS itself, who might or not have fighter jet escort for parts of the trip. and the "Pentagon and military command and control jet accompanies AirForce one.
The presidential limousine (The beast) has to gulp gasoline like no other two cars on earth. Perhaps there are other equally armored and fortified limousines around the world, I really dont know
Then of course everything in reverse to return home.
I bet that in a year, the emission from POTUS traces exceeds that of several countries.
Something I often think about when POTUS travels to environmental conferences. The best POTUS could do was to attend remotely (and sign documents digitally? (not sure if that can be done)
Is he net negative?
The problem isn't that Tesla is selling. The problem is that others are buying. At the end of the day it's not Tesla's fault if these government schemes aren't resulting in ideal overall outcomes.
Not only that, but focusing just on emissions is not comprehensive enough when thinking about the environmental impact of these technologies as a whole. As an example, the extraction of lithium in south america is decimating extremely delicate ecosystems (such as ancient archeon that resides in these extreme environments).
So I do wonder if trying to offer an similar but not quite alternative to car transportation is actually doing as much good as we think, it might be better for governments to push for more collective solutions to transportation that will drastically reduce environmental impact as a whole. Not that electric cars are not better than petrol or gasoline cars, but still, I think as a whole the car industry (this includes electric) is probably a net negative to environment and electric cars in particular are prolonging the life of technology that we should be thinking of reducing as much as possible.
I like how speculative and yet casually confident we get on here. Cities like NYC and Chicago have respectable public transportation systems. Have we analyzed what cars are used for here?
One problem is how do you propose getting people from a dense area to a weekend getaway to the woods, the mountains or a beach?
Another problem is, people live in semi rural and suburban areas, too, not everyone lives in an apartment building five minutes from a bus or subway.
Cars are obviously useful for the country side, but that's not really the issue. The issue is that cities in America are designed with cars in mind first, the whole idea of the suburbs is a car-centric city design. Reducing the need for cars is a huge ordeal that doesn't just touch transportation but housing and jobs as well.
I think it's pretty conceited to think we can have both sustainability and car-centric design at the same time. But it is possible to transition, I mean, the city I live in (Melbourne, Australia) has lots of suburbs but you can get anywhere by tram, train or bus and this obviously includes residential suburbs and the city center. It's a little crazy to me when you say people don't live five minutes away from bus stops, I just can't imagine how you'd get around such a living situation. I mean, what do you do when you go out drinking? How do you get home? I guess you rely on ubers and taxis?
But reducing the need for cars of course means increasing the means people for people to go places in different methods of transporation and changing the way our cities are structured. To me, starting to invest in public transporation is the right way of moving forward, rather than subsidies to electrify cars.
The batteries in each Tesla Semi could make multiple shorter range delivery trucks/vans that benefit from stop and go regenerative braking much more.
I see no posts for all the other rich people who uses their jets for trips that does nothing to reduce our impact to the climate.
It seems quite stupid to me to obsess so much over one persons negative impact and ignoring all the good that has come from the companies he runs.
Most haters would for sure fly private themselves if they could so I think it's jealousy masked as critique.
If you don't see a post about other rich people using jets to travel, you could be the first to be the change you criticize others off not being.
What good has he actually done?
Tesla was never founded by him, nor has Tesla been the driving force of adaptation of the ev, since the industry has been having its ups and downs for over 100 years.
He has hyped up evs for sure, that he deserves all the credit for.
My point with "founding" was that a common rebuttal is "Tesla was founded by Elon, he sacrificed so much for EVs!", when in reality the foundation of Tesla was already built and Elon instead did a take over.
It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing" while in reality they impacted the industry in profound ways, yes, but never would they eclipse the entire industry.
That is wildly incorrect, or at least is inconsistent with the consensus opinion of Wikipedia. Martin and Marc had done zero design or engineering work prior to Elon Musk's involvement. All they had was notions of commercialising work already done by other people — namely AC Propulsion with their tzero prototype — something which Musk also wanted to do. In fact this parallel interest was what connected Musk with Tesla in the first place.[0]
Musk was the first and most significant investor in Tesla, which is to say that it was his personal wealth which allowed a functioning company called Tesla to exist in the first place. In its formative years, Musk continued to pour more of his personal wealth in to stave off Tesla's bankruptcy.[1]
While Musk wasn't involved in the day-to-day running of the company until around 2008, he had some involvement in engineering work from the earliest moments that the company started doing any engineering work.[1]
> It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing"
I think it would be reasonable to describe Gates and Jobs as the "fathers of personal computing". It's an apt metaphor when one considers the relative involvement of a biological mother and biological father in the formation of a new human person.
Other than as a straw man constructed by detractors, nobody claims that Gates, Jobs or Musk did anything of significance single-handedly. But to the extent that any one person can possibly impact an industry such labels are reasonably applied to persons like Gates, Jobs and Musk.
I appreciate that it's easy to overstate the role of inspired leadership, but it has become very fashionable to understate it. Yes, Apple had many incredible engineers. Without the return of Jobs to Apple, would those brilliant engineers have done anything like the iPod? More likely they would have executed with technical excellence on a new Apple LaserWriter printer motherboard or another iteration of the Newton MessagePad.
Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Did Jobs personally make the iPod? No. Did the skilled engineers at Apple make the iPod? Well, they didn't make micro hard disks, LCD screens, invent semiconductor photolithography or develop the MP3 audio codec either... What we can say for sure is that the iPod wouldn't have existed in 2001 without Jobs' vision and execution.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero#Lithium-io...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...
Literally the most important part, proving they were sufficiently advanced that governments could confidently begin phasing in bans of new combustion vehicle sales, dragging legacy auto to EVs as well. Who cares who the founder is? And what about JB!?
Something that has been in the making as I said, over 100 years for EVs.
Elon has done the advertisement part, but he's only 1 person not an entire industry.
Who cares if tesla was founded by someone else, he saw potential and executed the growth to what it is today. Tesla is also just one of the several great companies he has founded or been an early part of that does amazing things.
What companies have you been a key player in that has made great technical progress or reduced our environmental impact? Stop the hate man, be mature.