The choice that lost Elon Musk his Empire, in almost real time
It’s 2:54 am, Monday, January 27, 2020 as I begin writing this.
I started to smile as I began here, because I realize now that Tesla can’t possibly win this, no matter what sort of maneuvering they attempt or what they do to me.
I stopped in the middle of doing so. I’m definitely not smiling.
It doesn’t bring me any kind of joy to fight a battle which will no doubt prove costly for countless people, to say nothing of the obstacle it presents for an automaker that makes brilliant vehicles, is generally on the right side of history, and that virtually all of my friends love. Or for the challenges it will create for a person I consider an outstanding human being: Elon Musk. It doesn’t make me happy to bring misfortune on any other person; I think it’s not generally advisable to attempt to ‘use the truth’ and/or public muscle in even an attempt to bring fossil fuel company executives to heel.
Read that again:
I don’t even think it’s a good idea to try to chase after fossil fuel execs at this stage of the game, because fighting that battle will almost certainly lose us the war on climate change.
But let me clear up something right now:
I am not talking to you, general public.
I’m talking to the scores of very well educated people who I’ve spoken to before on this topic, I’m very much going to list their names eventually, and I don’t care if everyone else in the general public considers it intellectually snobbish for me to handle things in this way. My issue is not with you at this point. I realize that Hanlon’s razor is in effect, and that you have no real way of knowing what you’re doing by offering your inexpert views, sideshow commentary, insults, or other targeted harassment.
It’s not that I don’t care what you’re saying — I actually do care. I just know you have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t have time to address all your well-intentioned but substanceless comments right at the moment. I’m not going to speak to your endocrine systems all pumping away, no matter how much you may hate me, or how much stock you have at risk.
Money is not the point of this anyway, if it weren’t already clear.
So it’s the well-educated — those I’ve spoken to and those very concerned about this issue — who I am addressing here. You’re the ones who might still put the cannonball back in the cannon, not the mob. The mob never does anything productive aside from destroying things so that those things absolutely have to be rebuilt. The mob is the group most ultimately responsible for all of this, and the mob NEVER responds to reason. The mob responds to gamification. Incentive systems. Targeted marketing.
The mob listens to indirect reasoning. They respond to emotional carroting and scolding. The mob generally hates reasoning, except in the case it allows them to keep thinking what feels good to them. Elon knows this just as much as I do:
The executive functions of your frontal lobe serve your amygdala, not the other way around. If you can’t figure out something that basic, don’t bother replying.
Smart people don’t act like a mob. They don’t, Bill McKibben, mistakenly think they can raise a bigger mob to make sure the small-and-very-wealthy mob is “forced” to listen to reason. Pitchforks don’t work anymore, FYI.
Smart people listen to reason. Most of you can’t even phrase the general argument I’m making yet. That ought to tell you something, oughtn’t it?
Smart people sure as shit don’t question the expertise of someone who has far more experience on the topic in question than virtually anyone alive, and who’s studied it to the exclusion of almost literally everything else for YEARS.
If you can’t listen to reason at this stage, then we’ve all lost anyway, so it doesn’t even matter whether I’ll eventually be forced to join the lot of you. We’ve already suffered rather dearly, and no one has even firmly decided what “we’ve lost the war” even means. Is it 2 degrees? 3? 8?
1 degree of warming certainly isn’t enough to call it a loss, is it, Alex Steffen?
At least we ought not squander the one chance we have left.
Which, to state it explicitly, is Tesla.
If any of the Tesla advocates who I’ve long considered my friends want to weigh in, I will certainly consider thoroughly your input. I will read each and every last word you offer me in the order in which it is received until the deadline I’ve already stated is in place:
Tuesday, January 28, 2020, 4:20PM EST.
You should send it to negativecarbonroadtrip@gmail.com
It’s noteworthy how silent you all have been. It is almost as though you know damn good and well I’m telling the truth and you figure I ought to be able to do all of this on my own. I’d certainly try, but I doubt if I’d succeed.
All I can do is raise awareness, and put everything I have into doing so.
Note:
I’m not doing this solely because it’s the right thing to do, nor solely to prove the point that doing the right thing is always what you should do. I’m not even doing it because of the general concept “the truth shall set you free.”
It’s more complicated than that, and, phrased alternately, far simpler.
I‘m doing it because mismanagement is a mortal threat to a company, and we don’t get a second chance on this one.
We need the real management concerns many of us have about Tesla addressed IMMEDIATELY. We can’t live on borrowed time and empty promises anymore. The cars are great, no doubt. The problem is that no one can possibly feel completely safe in them — nor even with them sharing our public roads — if Tesla refuses to address at least the safety issue which could well have cost me my life.
There may or may not be others, but there definitely IS at least one consumer safety issue that could have killed me and/or other people nearby.
I can’t and won’t be a party to that. Which means that because I know what I know, there’s no possible way for me to avoid legal repercussions for it without making sure others know about it, or that it in some way gets addressed with certainty.
It doesn’t matter whether the overarching story is one of the Judeo-Christian tradition, whether a simulation’s operators are watching and awarding or deducting points on each of our scorecards, or whether this actually IS all there is. I’m going to do the same thing, because Tesla hasn’t given me any other choice:
I only asked that they open a communication line. And they’ve treated this situation as though I’m trying to invoke fear rather than the power of truth. They’ve attempted to pretend I’m lying. They’ve bet no one will believe me. That the proof they know damned good and well I have won’t be enough, because I won’t be able to expose it sufficiently.
You’re not betting particularly wisely this time, Elon. You’re going to lose.
I know the story of Job. I’m good with being on the right side of the difference between right and wrong, even if I wind up having to start all over again with nothing but “worn-out tools” as Kipling says.
There is one point that he has mistaken in his If:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
The point he mistakes is this one:
And lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss.
I might well lose. And in the event I do, I certainly won’t be breathing anymore. But it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to phrase it as though I’ll have any choice in the matter, because if I lose this one, I won’t be in any position to “own” anything, let alone
“the Earth and everything that’s in it.”
I’ll in all probability be dead.
