BeeVee23 ❤🇺🇦

Musk's early strengths were never really about personally inventing technology. He had an extraordinary ability to recognise disruptive opportunities, attract brilliant engineers, raise capital, take enormous financial risks & turn ambitious ideas into commercial reality. He helped accelerate EV adoption, battery technology & reusable rockets, challenging industries that seemed almost impossible to disrupt. What makes his transformation so extraordinary is that he once championed climate science, defended environmental action & promoted transition away from fossil fuels. In 2017, he resigned from Trump's advisory councils over the Paris climate agreement withdrawal. He understood the science, recognised the economics & helped make electrification commercially desirable. I remember someone genuinely excited about building a cleaner, technologically advanced future. Yet today, the same man increasingly embraces far-right politics, amplifying division, disinformation, conspiracy theories & extremist rhetoric through his extraordinary wealth, influence and control of X. And it goes far beyond ordinary conservative politics. His rhetoric & voices he amplifies have intersected with racism, Islamophobia, antisemitic conspiracy narratives, xenophobia, misogyny, transphobia & anti-immigrant hostility. His gender-based insults, attacks on transgender people & amplification of inflammatory demographic claims are despicable. Then there's his selective interpretation of free speech. Defending unpopular opinions is fundamental to democracy. Using an enormous platform to amplify hatred & misinformation while confronting journalists, researchers & critics raises serious questions about that commitment. X can influence elections, deepen social divisions & undermine confidence in democratic institutions. Independent research documented increased hate speech following his takeover. His relationship with science is equally contradictory. His companies depend on physics, engineering & evidence-based innovation, yet he increasingly amplifies climate scepticism, questionable public health claims & hostility towards scientific expertise. The man who once defended climate scientists now supports political movements frequently obstructing climate action, while attacking environmental movements. And there's Mars. I admire the ambition of making humanity multiplanetary, but find it remarkable that someone so focused on protecting humanity against existential threats increasingly downplays protecting Earth. Even a severely climate-damaged Earth would remain vastly more habitable than Mars. Surely improving our existing planet deserves at least as much urgency as establishing another civilisation. Perhaps most concerning is the concentration of power. Extraordinary wealth, satellite communications, government contracts, critical technology, political influence & control of a global information platform, all concentrated around one individual. Democracy requires accountability, independent journalism, functioning institutions & an informed public, not powerful individuals amplifying distrust and extremism. Technological progress means little if society simultaneously becomes more divided, prejudiced, hostile towards minorities & distrustful of evidence. Racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, antisemitism, transphobia & xenophobia aren't progress. They're old prejudices with new amplification. I'm not sure where this transformation comes from. Perhaps childhood trauma shaped him. Perhaps it's simply that old adage, power tends to corrupt, & absolute power corrupts absolutely. Maybe both. Clearly, wealth & entrepreneurial brilliance don't automatically bring wisdom, empathy or sound political judgement. History may remember Musk's engineering legacy while judging his political & social influence very differently. A man who helped accelerate technological progress may ultimately be remembered for helping accelerate social & political regression.

Hydrogen is a Trojan horse for the fossil fuel industry. It is constantly promoted as the future of clean transport. But most hydrogen produced today comes from fossil fuels, particularly natural gas. And producing hydrogen from natural gas releases emissions. Even so-called “blue hydrogen” relies on fossil gas, with carbon capture technology that doesn’t eliminate all emissions. But here’s where hydrogen cars become completely ridiculous. To produce just 1kg of green hydrogen through electrolysis requires roughly 50-55kWh of electricity, BEFORE compression, storage and transportation. That 1kg of hydrogen might get a hydrogen fuel cell car around 60-70 miles. Meanwhile, put that same 50-55kWh of electricity directly into an electric car and you could travel around 180–220 miles. The same electricity. THREE TIMES the distance. Why would we use renewable electricity to manufacture hydrogen, compress it, transport it to a filling station and then convert it BACK into electricity inside a car? When we can simply put that electricity straight into the battery? The the real question is why are fossil fuel companies so enthusiastic about hydrogen? Because hydrogen offers them an opportunity to continue selling natural gas, investing in infrastructure and maintaining their influence over the energy industry. Hydrogen absolutely has a role in decarbonising industries where direct electrification is difficult. But pushing hydrogen as a mainstream alternative to electric cars makes very little environmental or economic sense.

Depressed about climate? Don't be: Since 2015, we (you!) bent global warming forecasts by 1°C, from 3.6°C to 2.6°C, adding 7x more solar than expected History's most successful environmental campaign Ep 107 of the Angry Clean Energy Guy podcast is out theangrycleanenergyguy.com/p…

The 50 wealthiest families own more wealth than the poorest 34 *million* people. The problem is not a pensioner or a young person looking for a job - the problem is wealth inequality. We need a wealth tax. Now.