The Patriot Post® · Fossil-Fuel-Burning Elon Musk Finds an Enemy in WaPo

If there’s one thing The Washington Post has no shortage of, it’s irony. This week, the global-warming-will-surely-kill-us outlet reported that “Tesla chief Elon Musk’s corporate jet flew more than 150,000 miles last year, or more than six times around the Earth, as he raced between the outposts of his futuristic empire during what he has called ‘the most difficult and painful year’ of his career.”

The Post says these excursions underscore “an awkward dynamic for one of the world’s most outspoken crusaders of renewable energy: In September, a few days after calling fossil fuels ‘the dumbest experiment in human history,’ his plane burned thousands of pounds of jet fuel flying 300 miles from L.A. to Oakland so Musk could view a competitive video-gaming event.”

This self-righteous behavior has precedent, of course. As the Post concedes, “Musk is far from the only corporate leader to depend on the speed, flexibility and privacy of flying across the world on a private plane, and his high-profile role as chief executive, visionary and hype man for multiple companies helps explain why he would rely on it so heavily to get around.”

Yet there is hardly as much finger-pointing and lamenting over hypocrisy when it comes to other climate crusaders like Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Bill Nye. These alarmists and many others regularly traverse the globe via airplanes for the sole purpose of vilifying the fuel that gets them places.

Just last week, MarketWatch reported, “Despite global warming being one of the major issues discussed at Davos every year, some 1,500 private jets are expected … at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to an estimate from Air Charter Service, up from 1,300 last year.”

Nobody in Davos has apparently heard of Skype.

Tesla’s mission is honorable. In fact, renewable energy is a worthy goal. But the agenda, rhetoric, and egregious hypocrisy surrounding the industry is repugnant. Musk undoubtedly deserves some criticism for his hypocritical behavior, but so too does the Post for its sanctimoniously looking the other way when it serves the Left’s broader agenda. In addition to Musk, the Davos story further demonstrates that elitists never actually practice what they preach. But coverage of leftist duplicity isn’t necessarily created equal.