Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke at a conference in Norway on Monday, and amid his announcement that he plans to have self-driving Teslas on the market by the end of the year, he made the admission to reporters that the transition away from fossil fuels is happening too quickly.
Reuters reports that Musk told reporters that he thinks “we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilisation will crumble.”
“One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy,” he added. “That will take some decades to complete.”
This isn’t the first time Musk has expressed the opinion that we still need to rely on oil and gas even as we look for more sources of energy. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he tweeted that oil and gas production was necessary.
Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately.
Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2022
In a reply to himself, Musk said that “sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil & gas exports.”
This is a far cry from the man who once told astrophysicist and professional pedant Neil deGrasse Tyson that fossil fuel energy was the “dumbest experiment in history, by far.” He also once claimed that the fossil fuel industry was engaged in propaganda against him.
Later in March, Musk praised nuclear power in an interview with Mathias Döpfner.
“You should not only not shut down the nuclear power plants, but you should also reopen the ones that have already shut down,” he told Dopfner. “Those are the fastest to produce energy. It is crazy to shut down nuclear power plants now, especially if you are in a place where there are no natural disasters.”
And just last week, Musk tweeted his continued support for nuclear power.
Countries should be increasing nuclear power generation! It is insane from a national security standpoint & bad for the environment to shut them down.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 26, 2022
It’s refreshing to see someone like Elon Musk come around on the need to combine new energy technology and innovation with tried and true energy sources that we can use right now.
“Green energy” may be in our future, but it’s going to take some time, which is why running away from fossil fuels as quickly as the Biden administration and European radicals are wont to do is foolishness.
Source: PJ Media
