Because, ahem, he is not that smart. Humanity tends to glorify people who made a bit of money and mindlessly follows them into the abyss.
The reality is that sustainability does not exist anywhere in the universe, and no life will exist forever. The cause of renewal leads to temporal consequences of sustainability and by the asymmetry of entropy, not the other way around. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, confounding cause and consequence leads to grave depravity of reason.
In his Tesla announcements, Elon frequently discusses renewable energy sources to drive a “fully sustainable future” for humanity. That is grave depravity of reason.
Humanity will not exist forever. A renewable future for humanity can only be secured with renewable energy sources. Even if he presupposes there is only one, Elon forgets that the vector of renewal is entirely different from the sustainability vector, as I have pointed out here.
Elon probably thinks it is best not to depress the public with the uncontrollable reality of nature’s entropy. Humanity’s future is predicated on doing more with less and becoming more adaptable to the decline of available energy nature’s entropy imposes on us. This means humanity must get physically fitter to fight off disease and become more enlightened to anticipate what is coming down the pike.
To suggest the sun provides sustainable energy is obviously also flawed. One star, like our sun, dies every second in our observable universe. But in the context of life on earth, the scope of “our” sun’s relative sustainability is bound to outperform the lifespan of the human species.
A vector of sustainability cannot support the vector of humanity’s evolutionary renewal. And while I applaud how Elon’s technical prowess has the potential to change the world for the better, we must be critical of his interest in building a virtual world that uses the fanfare of technology to obfuscate nature’s undeniable reality.
We all must come to terms with nature’s truth to plot the best future for humanity.
