Elon Musk introduces his new right-wing fans to a carbon tax; goes as well as you’d expect
Elon Musk is introducing his new right-wing fans to the idea of implementing a carbon tax, and it goes about as well as you would expect.
Over the last few years, Musk has become a sort of hero of the right.
Regardless of where you stand politically, it is a fascinating situation. I remember not too long ago when the right consistently attacked him for taking advantage of government subsidies at his companies.
A few years later, he buys Twitter, reinstates some previously banned conservative accounts, makes fun of Joe Biden and other democrats, starts to talk about “wokeness” and illegal immigration consistently, and now he is loved by the right.
Through this period, the once zealot climate change warrior who quit President Trump’s business council because he withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, started talking a lot less about climate change and Tesla’s mission to accelerate to world’s transition to renewable energy.
On top of running six different companies, Tesla’s CEO is virtually a full-time political influencer now.
It is creating an interesting situation. For the first time in a while, Musk decided to use his massively popular X account to promote an idea perceived as left-wing (even though it shouldn’t be political): a carbon tax.
Musk wrote:
Musk has been pushing the idea of a carbon tax for a long time, and it’s interesting to see him introducing the idea to his new right-wing fans.
As you can imagine, it didn’t go too well.
Most of the top-voted comments underneath his post were responses that were quite negative. Here are a few examples:
I had to go down about 50 responses to see a positive response to Musk’s comment. It appears that for better or worse, Musk’s X profile is now dominated by his new right-wing fans.
Electrek’s Take
I am the first to admit that a carbon tax is difficult to implement correctly. In theory, it makes a ton of sense. In fact, free-market conservatives should love it since it fixes the market.
A free market only works if it’s fair and all external costs are accounted for. If external costs are not accounted for, the market becomes inefficient and fails.
A carbon tax accounts for the external costs of emitting carbon. It fixes the market inefficiency – making the true costs (including environmental) accounted for in the costs of the products. The products best for the environment would come up on top.
Now, to agree with that, you need to agree with the vast majority of environmental scientists who say that humanity’s carbon production is contributing to the acceleration of the Earth’s warming.
Yes, the climate has always naturally changed for billions of years, but it doesn’t mean that humans starting to pump billions of metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year is not accelerating it. The data looks clear.
For example, the amount of solar energy the earth is receiving has followed the natural cycle of the sun, and yet, global temperature has increased massively amid increased industrialization:
Therefore, at the very least, we can agree that products emitting less carbon over their entire life cycle are less risky of negatively affecting the environment. So why take more risk?
So, a carbon tax would, at the very least, help reduce the risk of this crazy experiment that humanity is conducting by unearthing carbon and burning it into the atmosphere in incredible amounts.
Now, I agree it’s hard to implement correctly. There are a lot of different aspects to it. For example, it works best if it’s global. Everyone needs to get on board. There’s the idea that the US shouldn’t get involved unless everyone gets involved, but that’s a decision between being a positive leader or accepting to be part of the problem because others don’t want to be part of the solution. I don’t like that mentality.
Also, it needs to be meaningful with a fair price. There have been carbon taxes before, but they had minimal impact because they haven’t really accounted for the trillions of dollars that burning fossil fuels costs worldwide every year.
It’s an incredibly difficult tax to make it fair, but I think it’s one worth doing. There could be a way to do it while reducing other taxes and encouraging people to live lifestyles that emit less carbon. And if you want to keep doing it, you can. It’s just that now it will reflect the true costs of the products.
As a side note, I hate to get too political. I’m not a very political person. I don’t believe that a lot of truly meaningful change in history came from politics and politicians. I don’t consider myself left or right. I approach every issue with an open mind. Please keep that in mind before for call me a leftist for endorsing a carbon tax.
In fact, I think we should go back to the days when this was a bipartisan issue in the US. Conservatives often claim that their side has the better economic policy, and nearly every economist is in favor of a carbon price – because unpriced externalities are a market inefficiency, and a carbon price solves that. Plus, a group of influential republican luminaries, including Bush and Reagan’s Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker, Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and conservative economist Greg Mankiw have all endorsed a carbon price.
One of the main problems is that it’s called a carbon “tax,” and many people, especially conservatives, have a visceral reaction to that word. If that’s your case, please try to get past it and understand the reasoning behind it.
Finally, please keep the comment section civil.
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Environment
Solar and wind industry faces up to $7 billion tax hike under Trump’s big bill, trade group says
Is Nissan raising the red flag? Nissan is cutting about 15% of its workforce and is now asking suppliers for more time to make payments.
Nissan starts job cuts, asks supplier to delay payments
As part of its recovery plan, Nissan announced in May that it plans to cut 20,000 jobs, or around 15% of its global workforce. It’s also closing several factories to free up cash and reduce costs.
Nissan said it will begin talks with employees at its Sunderland plant in the UK this week about voluntary retirement opportunities. The company is aiming to lay off around 250 workers.
The Sunderland plant is the largest employer in the city with around 6,000 workers and is critical piece to Nissan’s comeback. Nissan will build its next-gen electric vehicles at the facility, including the new LEAF, Juke, and Qashqai.
According to several emails and company documents (via Reuters), Nissan is also working with its suppliers to for more time to make payments.
“They could choose to be paid immediately or opt for a later payment,” Nissan said. The company explained in a statement to Reuters that it had incentivized some of its suppliers in Europe and the UK to accept more flexible payment terms, at no extra cost.
The emails show that the move would free up cash for the first quarter (April to June), similar to its request before the end of the financial year.
One employee said in an email to co-workers that Nissan was asking suppliers “again” to delay payments. The emails, viewed by Reuters, were exchanged between Nissan workers in Europe and the United Kingdom.
Nissan is taking immediate action as part of its recovery plan, aiming to turn things around, the company said in a statement.
“While we are taking these actions, we aim for sufficient liquidity to weather the costs of the turnaround actions and redeem bond maturities,” the company said.
Nissan didn’t comment on the internal discussions, but the emails did reveal it gave suppliers two options. They could either delay payments at a higher interest rate, or HSBC would make the payment, and Nissan would repay the bank with interest.
The company had 2.2 trillion yen ($15.2 billion) in cash and equivalents at the end of March, but it has around 700 billion yen ($4.9 billion) in debt that’s due later this year.
As part of Re:Nissan, the Japanese automaker’s recovery plan, Nissan looks to cut costs by 250 billion yen. By fiscal year 2026, it plans to return to profitability.
Electrek’s Take
With an aging vehicle lineup and a wave of new low-cost rivals from China, like BYD, Nissan is quickly falling behind.
Nissan is launching several new electric and hybrid vehicles over the next few years, including the next-gen LEAF, which is expected to help boost sales.
In China, the world’s largest EV market, Nissan’s first dedicated electric sedan, the N7, is off to a hot start with over 20,000 orders in 50 days.
The N7 will play a role in Nissan’s recovery efforts as it plans to export it to overseas markets. It will be one of nine new energy vehicles, including EVs and PHEVs, that Nissan plans to launch in China.
Can Nissan turn things around? Or will it continue falling behind the pack? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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Environment
Elon Musk said to bet on Tesla delivering Robotaxi in June, yet those who did just lost big
Elon Musk said just a few weeks ago that betting on Tesla delivering its promised Robotaxi in June is a “money-making opportunity,” and yet, those who listened to him just lost big.
A fan of Musk lost $50,000 betting on Tesla Robotaxi.
With the rise in prediction markets, you can bet on virtually everything these days.
Sites like Polymarket have about a dozen prediction markets related to Tesla, where anyone can bet on events such as Tesla delivering its robotaxi service.
There have been a couple of specific markets about that, and Musk directly commented on one titled “Will Tesla launch a driverless Robotaxi service before July?:
Less than two weeks ago, the market gave Tesla only a 14% chance of launching the service, and Musk called it a “money-making opportunity.”
At the time, less than $500,000 was traded on this market, but Musk made it way more popular.
Now, over $7 million has been traded on this market, and while Tesla claims to have launched its Robotaxi service on June 22nd, the market currently gives Tesla less than 1% chance today, with less than a day left in June.
Each prediction market has clear “resolution” rules and Musk evidently didn’t read them before suggesting there was money to be made betting “yes”:
This market will resolve to “Yes” if Tesla publicly launches a fully driverless taxi service by June 30, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, it will resolve to “No.”
Any service that allows a member of the general public to summon and ride in a Tesla vehicle operating without any human—onboard or remote—actively controlling the vehicle will count. A human may be present in the vehicle or monitoring remotely for emergency intervention, but they must not be physically positioned to take control (for example, no safety driver in the driver’s seat) and must not actively steer, brake, accelerate, or otherwise drive the car under normal operation.
A program that is restricted to Tesla employees, invite-only testers, closed-beta participants, factory self-delivery features, or the mere release of Full Self-Driving software for private owner-drivers will not qualify. Regulatory permits or approvals, press demonstrations, and prototype unveilings without live public ridership likewise will not count toward resolution.
This market’s resolution source will be a consensus of credible reporting.
There are a few things in the resolution that disqualify what Tesla launched on June 22nd. First off, there’s a human inside the vehicle ready to take control with their finger on a kill switch. We have already seen interventions from the in-car Tesla supervisor, who are still very much necessary.
Secondly, the resolution requires a launch that is not restricted to an invite-only basis, which is currently the case.
The level of remote operations could also prove challenging to confirm, and it is part of the resolution.
Electrek found someone who lost $50,000 following Musk’s “money-making opportunity”:
Someone else has lost $28,000 and is now betting another $27,000 that Tesla will achieve this by the end of July.
Currently, Polymarket‘s odds only put a 21% chance of Tesla delivering on the service based on the previously mentioned resolution before August:
There’s another market predicting if “Tesla launches unsupervised full self-driving (FSD) by the end of 2025” that has arguably an even more restrictive resolution, and it currently gives it a 59% chance of happening:
With Polymarket, users are not really “betting” on an outcome, but they are trying to beat the current odds by buying shares in “yes” or “no”, which they can sell to other users before the end of the timeline.
Electrek’s Take
It’s quite amusing that Musk was so confident people would believe in his Robotaxi that he didn’t bother to investigate what other people think an actual robotaxi service would entail, like in the Polymarket resolution.
Historically speaking, you are way better off betting against whatever timeline Musk claims about self-driving. He has been consistently wrong about it for a decade now.
Polymarket even has a market about Tesla launching unsupervised self-driving in California this year. I threw some money in that one because California has much stricter regulations when it comes to self-driving, and it requires a lot of testing before being deployed, as described in the resolution.
I doubt Tesla can go through that this year, but it’s not impossible.
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