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Elon Musk: 'We Need a Revolt Against the Fossil Fuel Industry' (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla's chief executive Elon Musk has accused politicians of bowing to the "unrelenting and enormous" lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry, warning that a global "revolt" may be needed to accelerate the transition to more sustainable energy and transport systems. Speaking at the World Energy Innovation Forum at the Tesla Factory in California, Musk claimed that traditional vehicles and energy sources will continue to hold a competitive edge against greener alternatives due to the vast amounts of subsidies they receive. The solution to this energy dilemma, Musk says, is to introduce a price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions or the carbon content of fossil fuels. "The fundamental issue with fossil fuels is that every use comes with a subsidy," Musk said. "Every gasoline car on the road has a subsidy, and the right way to address that is with a carbon tax. Politicians take the easy path of providing subsidies to electric vehicles, which aren't equal to the applied subsidies of gasoline vehicles. It weakens the economic forcing function to transition to sustainable transport and energy."
all the massive subsidies that solar/wind get? How about we remove subsidies from ALL and then wait and see what and who can stand on their own?
I generally like Musk, but this is bullshit. As someone said years before on Slashdot, "carbon credits" or any sort of carbon tax is nothing more than a scam by the ultra rich to make you and me live like bugs.
Why not just end the fossil fuel subsidies? Why must the answer *always* be to further tax the consumers?
Carbon tax hurts _you_, the consumer, not companies who are passing their costs to you. It also tends to harm the poorer areas who have less income. People in the Ozarks who rely on coal plants don't have the extra income to tax and pay for replacement power plants.
Shaping society with a hammer does not work, it has never worked. Carbon tax is a huge hammer. The working alternative is public funding through merit based incremental updates. That method is how we achieved national coverage for railroads, automobiles, etc..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And by subsidies, I mean specific transfer payments to the oil/gas industry or specific tax credits offered to the oil/gas industry. Things that make direct contributions to the oil and gas industry bottom line and allow them to sell the product at a higher margin.
I'm less interested in hearing about indirect costs of greenhouse gas emissions, etc. I believe these are real costs to society as a whole, so it's less clear whether the oil/gas industry should pay for these costs or whether they should be charged at the retail level to consumers of the product who actually do the emitting.
Every Tesla has a subsidy too- tax rebates from government + the entire electric infrastructure which is mostly based on fossil fuels. What's his point?
love is just extroverted narcissism
His own electric cars get about 40mpg co2 wise where I live due to the coal powering the majority of electrical use. Is he asking to up the price people pay on his own products?
Computed by who?
Talking about "cost" only makes sense, when there is a free market with competing suppliers using different technologies...
"Environmental cost" is notoriously incalculable — as both "Greenpeace" and the oil companies will attest from their respective sides of this barricade.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm serious. I want to like Elon Musk, but seriously his entire business model is based on getting the government (at all levels) to help him. His cars are subsidized heavily by the government, meaning that poor people in California are helping to pay for rich people buying expensive cars. That's not right. Now he wants more governmental help to hurt his competition. He needs to simply do the right thing, and that means competing fair and square.
And don't bother telling me about the massive "subsidies" available to the fossil fuel industry. Those subsidies are tax breaks for industry in the US that are available to Tesla, also, and I guarantee that they take advantage of it all.
I don't even want to go into the fact that his cars are, for the most part, coal powered.
Do you have ESP?
The other problem if you look at the subsidies that oil companies get they are the same that any other company get. Tax deductions for research, forgien tax credits and standard costs of business that any mom and pop business also gets as a subsidy.
Everyone knows the reason for Gulfwar I and Gulfwar II was oil. We ignore every other tiny nation on earth that's doing horrific things to their citizens but we got involved in Iraq because oil.
And that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.
And that doesn't even begin to cover the ongoing trillions of dollars for ships and bases in places we wouldn't care about if not for oil.
Oil's subsidies are so deeply embedded into the u.s. military that we think of them as national security interests instead of as the subsidies they are.
We wouldn't even need them if we invested in solar, batteries, wind and a fleet of electric vehicles.
If 10% of the U.S. fleet were electric vehicles, the value and price of oil would collapse to under $30 and stay there. And as a "commodity" it would lose it's geopolitical value. And the u.s. would be able to greatly reduce the urge to be involved with large parts of the globe.
It would also cripple a factory for terrorists who want to kill us and put a severe crimp in Putin's military aspirations.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The US military expenditures around the world that support oil production both directly (US company presence) and indirectly (to prop up supportive regimes) is effectively an additional subsidy that US tax money funds, above and beyond the actual subsidies paid or exempted by the government. I suspect that all of these together are significantly higher than current alternative energy subsidies.
The short version then is that FlyHelicopters wants to drastically lower the average standard of living over the long term, by allowing the planet to be trashed by the costs of fossil fuel borne by the public.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Elon Musk: 'We Need a Revolt Against the Fossil Fuel Industry'"
Yeah. Not. Everybody can guess there's much lobbying from the oil industry, no surprises there. However, nobody, and I mean nobody should come up to me and demand a revolution until they can actually create a suitable replacment.
Yes, I know how many people juuust looove Teslas - especially those who've spent pretty amounts for them no sh*t - but not everyone has a fast chargr at home, not everyone has a garage with a private always available charging source, not everyone uses their cars to only go short distances, not everyone has so long a life to spend hours on end for charging on a roadtrip, and I could on with this for hours.
Oh, and mind you, I actually like electric cars and support the direction these companies are trying to go towards.
I just don't like when they seem to be dilusional.
One more thing, which is actually beside the point, but I've just remembered I've read some people actually call the interior of the P90D luxurious. Now, come on people, we know love is blind, but there's only one thing there that's luxurious, and that's the price (yes, I know the'll release the cheaper, shorter range, less "luxurious" new model in like, a few years or so...).
My point is, if you want a revolution, you create it, then, we'll buy it. NOT the other way around.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
As someone said years before on Slashdot, "carbon credits" or any sort of carbon tax is nothing more than a scam by the ultra rich to make you and me live like bugs.
A carbon tax is not some big plot by rich people. It's a way to put an economic value on the cost of dealing with the pollution created by fossil fuels. It's no different in principle from forcing a manufacturer to pay for the cost of cleaning up a byproduct of their production process. Right now the fossil fuel industry is basically allowed to dump certain of their pollutants into the air without further financial consequence. The goal of incentivizing companies and individuals to pollute less is a good one in principle but difficult to pull off in practice.
Carbon credits are a silly political compromise and so far are largely ineffective (for several reasons but mostly because they issue too many of them) but it isn't a scam either. Carbon credits aren't as effective as a straight tax but unlike a tax they are politically palatable even though the net effect is substantially the same. Call something a tax and people freak out but give them something that has the same effect but isn't a direct tax and they calm down because nobody is saying the magical bad word "tax'.
Why not just end the fossil fuel subsidies?
That would be a nice start but it still doesn't cover the cost of the pollution that fossil fuels generate. Right now we not only don't make the oil and gas companies pay for the full cost of their pollution but we actually pay them (subsidies) to generate it! That's bonkers.
Butanol can use the existing gasoline/oil distribution infrastructure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It has almost the same octane and air/fuel mix as gasoline so retrofitting older cars isn't needed. Its a renewable and could be carbon neutral once its production gets high enough.
Still not at the point where it is commercially viable but several companies are working on it. And the oil companies are already trying to kill any competition in the production of it.
http://technical.ly/delaware/2...