Former President Donald J. Trump covered a range of topics on Monday during his two-hour, live-streamed chat on X with Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who has endorsed Mr. Trump’s latest presidential run.
On climate issues, Mr. Musk described himself as “pro-environment,” saying that the electric vehicles produced by Tesla, his car company, disproved the idea that “caring about the environment should mean that you have to suffer.” Mr. Trump emphasized the importance of fossil fuels to the economy.
Here are a few highlights from their discussion, with annotations by New York Times climate reporters.
Musk: The economy would collapse without oil and gas
“If we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse. So it’s, you know, I don’t think it’s right to sort of vilify the oil and gas industry.”
It would indeed be catastrophic if humanity had to stop using fossil fuels overnight, since oil and natural gas currently account for roughly 50 percent of the world’s energy use (with coal providing an additional 25 percent). Yet even the most aggressive plans for tackling global warming envision a far-less abrupt transition that would phase out the burning of oil, gas and coal over several decades.
Later in the interview, Mr. Musk said he was less worried about a more gradual shift to wind, solar and other emissions-free energy sources. “If, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, we’re, I don’t know, mostly sustainable,” he said. “I think that’ll probably be OK.”
Musk: The effects of carbon dioxide
“Eventually, it actually simply gets uncomfortable to breathe. People don’t realize this. If you go past 1,000 parts per million of CO2, you start getting headaches and nausea. And so we’re now in the sort of 400 range. We’re adding, I think about roughly 2 parts per million per year. So, I mean, it still gives us, so what it means is like, we still have quite a bit of time. We don’t need to rush.”
Mr. Musk is right that scientists have documented health effects in people who have been exposed to indoor carbon dioxide concentrations of 1,000 or more parts per million. But headaches and nausea are hardly the only reason to worry about the immense amount of carbon dioxide that is being added to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.