Elon Musk is Necessarily Controversial
Unless you’ve been living under a rock since the turn of the century, you’re probably aware of Elon Musk and all of his eccentricities. From the Thailand debacle to his underground tunnels, Elon always finds a way to stay in the headlines. You either love or you hate him, but one thing is for certain; You can’t get enough of him. We’ve put together the definitive reasons that we won’t stop talking about the next “King of Mars” anytime soon.
Elon Musk is Betting on Green Tech
This is probably where Elon gets the most criticism. In the realm of sustainability, he has many-a-critic. Is drilling a huge underground hole the best thing for the Earth? Probably not, but it’s a whole heck of a lot better than the cement monstrosity of a highway system. Is building hundreds of thousands of new Tesla vehicles good for the environment? Negative, but it’s better than hundreds of thousands of gas-powered vehicles on the highway. Is launching a bunch of rockets burning astronomical amounts of fuel good for Earth? Not quite. But at least he’s making them re-usable.
“They hate Musk, because they ain’t Musk”
The bottom line is this. No matter what Musk does, he’s going to have push back. That’s the nature of having a net-worth of $12.1 billion.
Musk’s SpaceX is the first to engineer reusable rockets.
Can’t Forget About Tesla
When you think Elon Musk, you think Tesla. And Tesla is kind of a double-edged sword for our planet. On one hand, we would like battery-powered cars to be popular. On the other hand, they can’t be popular unless you produce a shit-ton of electric cars. In turn, depleting some of the Earth’s resources. One can begin to understand the crux that Musk has put himself in here. Follow me a little further down this Tesla rabbit-hole.
He’s “Juiced Up” for Batteries
So we’d like electric cars to be popular, but they won’t be popular unless battery production/storage are cheaper (that’ll reduce production costs). Hmm… What if someone with a lot of money was able to build a huge factory that mass produces batteries at a reduced price? Oh, kinda like Elon Musk’s Gigafactory?
When finished, the Gigafactory will reportedly produce roughly 60% of the world’s lithium-ion batteries. In turn, reducing the cost of battery storage and production. On Dec. 29th, 2018, Musk began construction of his Gigafactory 3 in China. I mean, just look at this flyover footage.
With the battery-production set to outpace Tesla production in coming years, there is going to be a surplus of batteries in the market. Elon Musk’s hater’s - of which there are many - are saying that this large-scale production of Li- batteries will negatively impact our environment. Fair criticism.
Many studies have shown that lithium and nickel mining (both used in the battery-production process) are very harmful for our environment.
But are they as bad as oil and gas? That’s not even close. Not to mention, the ability to recycle lithium-ion batteries is a much more efficient and profitable process.
It’s another catch-22 for Musk. In an ideal world, energy production would be a zero-waste process. But we also understand that’s not reasonable at this time. Electricity is the future, and the Gigafactory might be a necessary step in the right direction.
He Is As Scared of AI As I Am
If you’ve ever seen I, Robot or 2001: A Space Odyssey, then you probably have a very rational fear of artificial intelligence. Likewise, Elon Musk has gone on the record many times as an outspoken critic against AI. He believes that artificial intelligence will have an unbelievable ability to learn quickly - and teach itself. Other’s seem to be not-so-scared on the advances AI has made in recent years. I visited my 72 year old grandmother over the holidays and she had not one, not two, but THREE Amazon Alexas throughout the house. Gma may give zero f*cks about AI taking over our planet, but you can consider me firmly Team Musk on this one.
He Has Some Bizarre Ideas
This is why we all love Elon, am I right? He says some of the most outlandish things, but it keeps him in the spotlight.
You might remember his attempt to help out with the Thailand soccer team rescue in 2018. A noble gesture… that was until he accused one of the divers of being a “Pedo”. Seen in his email to a reporter here.
He thinks nuking mars will make it more habitable. Not that I disagree with the science (I’m not enough of a nuclear engineer to understand what could go wrong), but it doesn’t sound… good? Any time you say you’d like to “Nuke” something, you inevitably induce some worry among the general public.
He has stated that vegan colonies will live on mars within 7-10 years. Am I the only one who thinks this may be an elaborate scheme to get rid of all the vegans here on Earth? I’m on to you, Elon. But in all reality, anyone who lives on Mars will almost have to be vegan - by virtue of the food that will be available to them.
And then he claimed he had funding to take Tesla private. That put him in some serious hot water with the SEC. How did Musk react? By throwing absolute haymakers on Twitter. (and agreeing to fraud charges, but that’s beside the point).
All told, it’s easy to see why Musk has so many haters. He says some crazy things. He has no problem boasting about himself. That’s what I think throws some people off. In an era of braggadocio, most of us tend to gravitate towards people who can humble themselves. At least, that’s the way I see it. Then again, if we didn’t have Elon, what would we have? Honestly, we wouldn’t have a lot of things to be excited about. Many of these things will make our planet a better safer place for our children. Sometimes you’ve gotta take the good with the bad.