Elon Musk isn't mad- oil

Why Oil Should Be Confined—and Why Musk Isn’t Mad

Less oil= less dependence on the Middle East

By any reckoning, oil is the black blood of the twentieth century. It coursed through our veins in the form of plastic, polyester, and petrol, infiltrating not only our homes but our wombs, our oceans, and our atmosphere. It has dictated wars, marriages of convenience between dictators and democracies, and the desecration of entire cultures. And like the worst sort of addiction, it leaves us numb, bloated, and belligerent, all while the planet withers under its chokehold.

It is time we treated oil for what it is: a resource too potent, too dirty, and too politically entangling to be left in the hands of ordinary people. A resource so ruinous in its ubiquity that its usage should be as tightly regulated as plutonium. Let Formula One have it—let them roar in their absurd metal missiles for the sake of sport, spectacle, and the testing of engineering limits. Confine it to race tracks, and to industries where no real alternative exists—aircraft manufacture, heavy shipping, specialist medical equipment. But commuting to the shops in a three-tonne SUV is not one of them. That’s just fetishism with a fuel tank.

And now enters Elon Musk—a man loathed by many feminists for his bombast, his cult of personality, and his techno-libertarian leanings. But let us, for once, look beyond the man and into the ideas. Musk has done more to disrupt the oil industry than a thousand protest marches. He understood that the only way to unshackle people from petrol was to make electric sexy, fast, and status-laden. He gave the capitalist male an excuse to abandon fossil fuels without having to abandon his toys.

His detractors will tell you he is self-serving. Of course he is. But so was Edison. So was Marie Curie, in her way. What matters is that the cultural tectonic plates are moving. Musk’s vision—electric cars, solar roofing, Mars dreams aside—is rooted in the correct assumption: we do not need oil to thrive. We have needed it to profit, to dominate, to indulge. But thriving is another matter.

So let oil be a tool of last resort. Confine its use to the industrial margins and let the rest of us detox. We cannot continue to suck on the teat of the Earth as though she is our endless wet nurse. That’s not progress—it’s infantilism with a carbon footprint.

And if Musk’s ideas get us weaned faster than policy or guilt-trips can, then by all means, let the man have his moment. Just don’t ask us to clap him into sainthood while we do it.

Ai and liz