Elon Musk, Space Travel and Electric Cars during Environmental Collapse
When reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, it is interesting to see how disaster capitalism played out in the early 2000s. The buyout of communities ravaged by natural disasters to establish beach fronts and new developments.
As we live through the intensification of wealth inequality (wealth of the super-rich has risen to $10.2 trillion and OECD government deficits rose from $47 trillion in 2019 to $52.7 trillion), it is hard to escape the notion of living through a global disruption underpinned by disaster capitalism or more poignantly, a “hunger games economy”.
It is these thoughts that came up when I encountered the Guardian article detailing the extreme asymmetrical use of flight and flying internationally with the global wealthy (1%) contributing 50% of the all emissions from commercial aviation.
What jumped out from the report was that the usage by the superwealthy utilizing their own 747s, and 737s can result in carbon dioxide outputs of up to 7500 tons per year nearly 1500 times the average output of a “world citizen” on flights for the rich alone.
Buried in the report was mention of the further intensification of energy use due to space tourism. This led me to re-examine the benefits of new-age rockets touted by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, billionaires who have grown tired of earthly concerns.
Given that estimates have each SpaceX launch as generating nearly 400 tons of carbon dioxide with nearly 100 tons per person for a Crew Dragonflight. This represents travel at similar per capita level to the most consumptive private air travel. Hence if millions of the wealthy and privileged are to make space and Mars their new holiday homes, the earth will suffer.
Space tourism and conquest is an insidious idea that demonstrates the power of capitalism to find purchase within disaster: the notion that we can consume our way to a better future.
No doubt that the greening of transport is necessary, a la overhyped Tesla, and that more durable space services, SpaceX and Starlink, are important. Nonetheless, at a time where human-made mass outweighs that of every terrestrial and marine species, every incremental extraction of earth resources, especially by the wealthiest, will mean less for conservation, less for future generations.
That the dreams of our generation including driverless electric cars will at best emit one third the emissions of normal petrol cars and leave behind a half of air pollution is a demonstration that we are moving into more of the same : “bad but better”. Especially true where a declining rich world population pushes western corporations to pursue fast growing developing countries and their resources.
It is telling that embodied within the same white older man is both a desire to provide emission reducing electric cars and pursuing the elevation of fossil fuel emission through space flight and Mars travel (ostensibly only for human survival). This true even as he leaves behind a Wall-E inspired dystopia of human made garbage.
Our dreams need to change away from greener consumptive patterns that are ultimately world affirming (and continue to drive resource consumption) towards a true world revolution in human life that brings us in closer harmony to nature.
Instead of driverless electric cars for all, we need better urban planning that drives up population density and enables the strengths of the most powerful invention in personal mobility: the bicycle. As Covid has shown us traffic clogged cities make us unhealthy, polluted and unhappy. We need more services, and friends closer within our environments to enable more of the social interactions we hope to return to. Instead of more Model X SUVs, a class of car that will leave a lot of air pollution and has been part of the second largest contributor to carbon dioxide emission since 2010 (SUVs), we need the uptake and proliferation of more boring buses. Rather than trips to far away planets and celestial bodies, or running away to the edge of space to escape the scarred human canvas on earth, we would all prefer and sourly need more forests, and natural habitats .
It also interesting how the grand visions of a self sustaining civilization on Mars intersects with questions of child rearing and social policy to help women and families thrive on Earth.
Very successful, wealthy earth bound societies like Japan and most of the developed rich world are struggling with crafting feminist policies to maintain stable population levels. Surely good family policies and more research and development into birth in space will be essential if any of these lofty goals of extra-terrestrial colonization are to be accomplished. Since for the foreseeable future women will give birth to children on earth or beyond, why not spare some billions to helping their earthly journey’s easier.
Notwithstanding, it is hard to imagine the machismo and grandeur of today’s billionaire class stepping up for good family policy, bicycles, or urban planning. These are not sexy and are actually boring due to their lack of consumption. They will require the creation of truly Boring companies, NGOs, and governments that soberly and assuredly attempt to steer our behaviors and governments away from disaster.
Most importantly it is necessary that the nuances of climate mitigation or even planet colonization doesn’t sell.
