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Image by Nina Zeynep Güle.
“We need clean air, not another billionaire!”
The words slip naturally from my lips, repeated by the crowd outside the Tesla showroom in Manhattan. It’s a go-to chant for Planet Over Profit 62 , the climate justice group I organize with. We want clean air, not wealth inequality, and the two are incompatible.
The action we co-organized on March 8 – in which 6 were arrested 63 for chanting inside the store while over 300 rallied outside – is part of the national #TeslaTakedown 64 campaign, aiming to disrupt Elon Musk’s profits while he guts the federal government in his unelected role leading the new Department of Government Efficiency.
Our action quickly went viral across social media platforms and particularly on X 65 , where dozens of right-wing accounts had a field day with the fact that environmental groups were protesting an electric vehicle company. Many of these comments reaffirmed Musk’s own proclamation 66 that he is doing “more for the environment than any single human on Earth.”
Scrolling through these comments, I was reminded of my family’s own history with Tesla. My father was one of the first thousand people to buy a Model S in the “signature red” exclusive to early buyers. I remember my parents bringing my three siblings and me to a test drive: my mother gasped when my father slammed the gas – no, pedal – and the car shot from 0 to 60 in less than two seconds. The interior was sleek and modern. It was electric.
Like my own family, many wealthy American liberals jumped at the opportunity to buy Teslas and become visible proponents of the clean energy transition. Musk was a darling in Big Tech – after selling PayPal in 2002, he didn’t sit back and enjoy his profits. He kept going, 67 determined to innovate, boasting about his 120-hour work weeks 68 . He seemed like a billionaire who truly cared, who was going to lead us into a green future.
And then, slowly but surely, the great Musk went “crazy,” as so many bumper stickers 69 on Teslas now claim. His biographers 70 debate whether it was stress, mental illness, or rampant drug use driving him mad. Nevertheless, when Musk cozied up to Trump’s side, he was clearly no longer the generous billionaire who would save the planet.
“It was capitalism after all,” Kara Swisher wrote in a March 9 essay for The Atlantic 71 , adapted from her epilogue in Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. She says that Musk and other tech leaders “revealed themselves” in their support of Trump during the 2024 presidential election to want to “reign like kings not just over tech, but over everything everywhere, and all at once.”
But did Musk really “reveal” himself when he came out in support of Trump? The billionaire has behaved like a billionaire for decades: indulging in an environmentally disastrous lifestyle, skirting the law, and clawing for more power. Musk may have been the face of the first electric vehicle company, but he’s done so for profit and power – not our planet.
Musk did not start Tesla; he seized it 72 with money and strong-arm tactics. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning started Tesla in 2003, and invented the technology behind it – they just needed money. Musk was a risk-taking investor who caught their interest, and subsequently became Tesla’s chairman. But Musk quickly stacked the board 73 with people who shared his belief that innovation should take priority over labor and environmental regulations. In 2007, they voted CEO Eberhard out, who said 74 his ousting felt like “a brick to the side of my head.”
Over the years, Tesla has been fined for violating dozens of labor and environmental regulations, according to a comprehensive report 75 from the Revolving Door Project. From 2014-2018, Tesla accumulated ten times more OSHA violations than its top ten competitors combined, and infamously forced factory employees to return to work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tesla has settled many lawsuits from employees for severe racial harassment, and Musk is an outspoken critic of workplace unionization.
For a supposedly green company, Tesla’s environmental record is abysmal. Tesla ranks fifth 76 among companies producing the most toxic air pollution nationally. The company’s factory in Fremont, CA, was fined in 2019 77 for multiple hazardous waste violations and air pollution, and the Austin, TX factory is under criminal investigation 78 for dumping toxic chemicals into the city’s sewers and the nearby Colorado River. Furthermore, the rare minerals 79 required for electric vehicle batteries, including cobalt and lithium, are tied to severe environmental and human rights violations globally.
Musk was never going to save the planet – and neither will any other billionaire. While Musk encourages Americans to buy Teslas, he jets around the world on a private plane. He has claimed 80 climate change alarm is “exaggerated.” He partnered 81 with a coal mining billionaire to elect Trump, and is now working with the latter to gut federal environmental regulations 82 .
Like other billionaires, Musk’s fortune has come at the expense of everyday people, from abusing his employees to calling his opponents criminals 83 . His billions could fund public transportation, housing, healthcare, and education. Instead, he’s taking a chainsaw to all of the government departments which provide those essential services.
That’s why environmentalists are protesting at Tesla – and will continue to do so.
The post Take Telsa Down: A Billionaire Was Never Going to Stop Climate Change 84 appeared first on CounterPunch.org 85 .
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org 86 and was authored by Sophie Shepherd.