Atmosphere of Earth

Tesla (and Space X CEO, Solar City Chairman) CEO Elon Musk made some important remarks yesterday at the “Business for Tomorrow” summit at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy yesterday. While the translations and the moderation/questions at the end are frustrating, Musk’s comments at the beginning are poignant.

On Refugees:

“Today’s refugee problem is perhaps a small indication of what the future will be like if we do not take action with respect to climate change. Today, the challenge is in terms of millions of people, but in the future, based on what the scientific consensus is, the problem will be in the hundreds of millions and much more severe.”

On taking action:

I think it’s very important that we take action today to recognize that we are making a very significant change to the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans. One that is almost impossible to reverse…

And where you could really feel some emotion:

If you go 20, 30, 50 years in the future, what do you say to your kids or your grandkids? It’s almost, like, scientists have all said that these bad things are going to happen, it’s, like 97 percent… So, to say to your kids or grandkids, like, ‘Did nobody tell you?’

No, everyone was telling us. ‘

So why didn’t you do anything?’ What’s the answer?

…I think it’s very important that we do something.

The full video, queued up at Musk’s remarks is below:
Expand
Expanding
Close