Missing from our first list are the richest man on this planet and the CEO of the world’s largest electric vehicle maker. Here’s why.
From Alex KnappForbes Employee
Bthen the editorial team behind this 12 months’s Forbes When Sustainability Leaders List began brainstorming for the list, Elon Musk’s name got here up early. And for good reason. The launch of the Tesla Roadster in 2008 did something many thought was not possible – it made electric cars cool. And as Tesla continued to release latest models, it spurred the auto industry to hurry up production of their very own electric automobile models. This was a giant deal for the environment within the US, where cars play a giant role within the environment. over 20% of total carbon dioxide emissions.
But the Forbes The Sustainability Leaders List will not be a lifetime achievement award. It focuses on people who find themselves making a difference in a sustainable way, and the evaluation was heavily weighted towards what those people have completed prior to now two years. Musk didn’t perform by that yardstick.
Let’s start with essentially the most obvious problem: Tesla’s slow decline. Once the undisputed leader in the electrical automobile industry, the corporate’s profits have fallen for 4 consecutive quarters. China-based BYD is now making more electric vehicles – earning its CEO and founder Wang Chuanfu a spot on the list. And a series of leadership mistakes have led to major Tesla investors turning against the controversial CEO.
One major misstep was the Cybertruck. Since Musk introduced it to the world in 2019 by breaking the vehicle’s “unbreakable” window, it has been tormented by delays, manufacturing problems, and general ridicule. Deliveries began last fall, years later than promised, but fewer than 20,000 units have made it into customers’ hands. Despite the short window, it has already been recalled 4 times, and videos of producing defects have gone viral on social media. On Reddit, the Subreddit “Cyberstuck”which tirelessly posts such failures has over 160,000 members – greater than ten times more people than actually own one. That’s not a superb sign. But even when the Cybertruck’s launch had gone flawlessly, it will still have sustainability issues – the big amounts of energy, aluminum and materials needed to provide the huge vehicles in comparison with other electric vehicles make them harmful to the environment.
Tesla is grappling with other issues, too. The Tesla Semi is years behind schedule, forcing customers to attend while rivals within the industrial fleet market fill orders and ramp up their delivery numbers. (Rivian’s success with its line of delivery vans, for instance, helped get RJ Scaringe, the corporate’s founder and CEO, on the list.) And after months of dealmaking by which Tesla got several EV rivals to make use of its charging standard, Musk pulled together his Supercharger team and announced plans to slow the network’s growth. It was a key competitive advantage for Tesla and a selling point for EV buyers — the shortage of a strong charging network is a significant obstacle for a lot of potential EV customers who’re hesitant to make the acquisition because of range anxiety. Slowing the network’s growth could mean a slowdown in EV production, which might make it harder for the U.S. to fulfill its climate goals. Instead, he has tasked Tesla engineers with constructing a series of humanoid robots as a substitute of cars. In addition, the corporate has also reduced production of electrical vehicles. almost half one million trees in Germany to construct its battery factory there.
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has also had a detrimental effect on broader climate goals. Since buying the corporate in 2022, Musk has cut significant parts of the trust and safety team and loosened restrictions on misinformation. One consequence of this? Climate change denial has increased on the web site: A current report by Climate Action Against Disinformation, a coalition of environmental and anti-disinformation groups, ranked last amongst major social media platforms in its handling of climate disinformation since it has “no clear policies to combat climate disinformation, there are no substantive mechanisms for public transparency, and there is no evidence of effective policy enforcement.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX has been confronted with a series of regulatory investigations into its environmental performance. Over the past six months, each the federal government Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have pending litigation against the corporate in reference to its Starbase facility in Texas. These proceedings are based on allegations that the space company repeatedly injured the Clean Water Act by discharging pollutants from the location into local waterways. The company denies any wrongdoing or environmental pollutionand argued in a lengthy statement earlier this month that these actions were “solely due to differences of opinion over paperwork.”
Finally, Musk seems to have lost interest in leading the way in which on environmental and sustainability issues in recent times. Earlier this 12 months, Tesla removed the corporate’s 2006 climate manifesto from its website. In it, Musk said his goal was to “accelerate the transition from an economy based on mining and burning hydrocarbons to a solar-electric economy, which I believe is the primary but not the only sustainable solution.” However, in a conversation with former President Trump on X earlier this 12 months, he backtracked on those ambitions, saying there was “no rush” to maneuver to a sustainable economy because the consequences of climate change wouldn’t be severe enough to fret about until carbon dioxide levels within the atmosphere reach much higher levels than they’re today. Climate scientists say those dangerous carbon dioxide levels are lower than half of what Musk has suggested.
Forbes plans to release a brand new edition of the Sustainability Leaders list every year, with a deal with current, high-impact actions. If Elon Musk changes course, we could be completely satisfied to incorporate him in a future list. But for now, he is not any longer an environmental leader.
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