The Meaning of Life 72
So the first reason why we need a sustainable energy
economy is peak oil. The second reason is environmental
reasons. A world without oil will be cleaner than a world
with oil, but a world without any fossil fuels is the best
alternative. Elon is not a fan of global warming since it’s a
dumb experiment. “They often say ‘How do we know for
certain that CO2 emissions cause global warming?’” Elon
asked. “If you ask a scientist ‘Do you know anything for
certain?’ they generally say ‘No we don’t know for certain,
we don’t know anything for certain’ But the overwhelming
opinion of the scientific community is that the CO2 is
causing global warming. Given that we will run out of oil
anyway, it doesn’t make any sense to put trillions of tonnes
of CO2 in the atmosphere and see what happens, which
could be catastrophic. It’s just a dumb experiment.”^341
The CO2 experiment is comparable to the cigarette
experiment. It was popular on Earth several years ago,
and some are still participating in it. “In the early days
of smoking they used to think that smoking was fine,”
Elon said. “This link between lung cancer and smoking
was completely ridiculous. They had like pregnant women
in ads smoking. It was difficult to prove an exact link.
Everyone that smoked didn’t get lung cancer. 99 percent of
the scientists thought that smoking is bad for your health.
The smoking lobby would say ‘Scientists disagree.’”
To accelerate the transition from a society dependent
on fossil fuels, Europe has a tax on petrol that favors fuel-
efficient vehicles. Elon wished the US had a similar tax.^66
“Even though I’ve got companies trying to address the