Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk expects humanity to move to an economy that's fully sustainable for the Earth within our lifetimes.
Musk said during the electric vehicle maker's investor day presentation that he's surprised most people he knows hold the opinion that the world must resort to extreme measures to save the planet from the consequences of using fossil fuels.
He used the point to tout his company's electric vehicles as helping to achieve a vision of comfortably saving the planet. Putting more electric vehicles on the road means only using about half the energy, conservatively speaking, than a gasoline-powered automobile, CoStar News' Parimal M. Rohit reported. Storing the energy for electric-powered vehicles also requires relatively little land use, according to Musk.
“There is a clear path to a fully sustainable Earth with abundance. It doesn’t require destroying habitats,” Musk said.
That goal, according to Musk, also doesn’t require being austere, sacrificing electricity or living in the cold.
“You could support a civilization much bigger than Earth, much more than 8 billion humans,” Musk said.