>his efforts bringing about

Government subsidies and his engineers brought that about. Not Elon freaking musk. Stop drinking his kool aid.

That's precisely why every private launch company before SpaceX succeeded! After all, they had even larger government subsidies and even more engineers! /s

It is your own biases making you misinterpret my words. I did not say Elon singly handedly achieved anything. But it's undeniable that he did put in effort with Tesla, and that helped bring electric cars to market, helping to start the transition away from ICE.

I don't think Elon is a saint, there's plenty not to like. But I think that you're so angered by him (probably drinking an alternative brand coolaid) that you're willing to discount any positive contribution, action, or utterance from Elon. Usually people aren't all good or all bad, as much as we'd like the world to be that simple.

they guy dropped how much coin on a social media platform that could have gone to the very environmental causes that he claims to want to advance?

what do you think $44 billion in climate lobbying would look like?

teslas still have to be manufactured. he probably would have a had a greater climate impact if he purchased everyone on earth the same model of bicycle that can be be repaired/reused indefinitely.

we should be trying to remove cars, reduce production, and replace it with public transit, etc. but that's neither cool nor profitable; electric cars are both of those things.

electric energy storage, on the other hand, is useful. so making batteries cheap is a good thing, and tesla definitely helped that a lot.

My point was not that Elon is a saint, or the best thing for the planet. Instead that there are so many individuals and companies that are much more deserving of your ire. But you're distracted by Elon's antics that you're ignoring much more legitimate threats to the environment.

> with his efforts bringing about electric cars earlier than what would have happened

Now if only they were affordable by the masses....

> He might be a loud mouth jerk, but surely he's not symbolic of the real problem here?

Elon Musk, the guy who floats insane ideas like tunneling and hyperloop to derail public transit projects?

Elon Musk proposed the hyper loop specifically to decrease investment in actual rail. He had no plans to build it. He has no interest in improving transportation or making it greener (which rail would certainly be). He only wants to enrich himself.