The Uphill Battle Of Clean Energy Against Musk’s Mighty Disinformation Campaigns – CleanTechnica

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Disinformation about renewable energy has become increasingly common in the US. Gaps between Republicans and Democrats on energy policy and clean energy-related issues have widened as more and more prominent Republicans promote or amplify disinformation about the effectiveness and reliability of renewables such as wind and solar, particularly after power grid failures.

Trump senior advisor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is, oddly, absent from these public discussions.

Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson write in the New York Times that there’s a “torrent of anger online from right-wing influencers and accounts that are promoting false claims and conspiratorial thinking.” Such numerous unsubstantiated attacks bode poorly for renewable energy projects, as Republican views “have increasingly converged with propaganda emanating from the Kremlin or with narratives aligned with its international goals.”

Trends loom darkly. The Trump–Musk administration is hostile to climate action. Meta has ended its fact-checking program in the US, which would have provided more reliable information to users about false climate claims they are seeing on their feeds. Climate denial content creation has never been simpler, with many graphic design and generative AI platforms allowing everyday users to produce sharp and persuasive imagery.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls this a “tale of two worldviews.”

• One is based on facts and evidence so that environmental policy is motivated by science and reason, “with the intent of advancing the common good and the sustainability of our civilization and our planet.” In this worldview, the climate crisis is seen as the defining challenge of our time, demanding immediate and urgent action.
• The other is “steeped in myth and conspiratorial ideation.” Environmental threats from this perspective become “an elaborate ruse perpetrated by scientists and politicians on the take.” Extending to globalists who want to instill a new socialist world order, climate crisis issues are reconceptualized as hoaxes from extremists.

Where is Musk in all this? Has his real focus all along been about obtaining the status of the world’s richest and most powerful person — regardless of the costs to the planet?

Public Support for Clean Energy Technologies Continues

Over the past four decades, federal and state governments in the US have passed numerous policies to promote clean energy. Political agendas, actors, and institutions have affected the enactment and evolution of major clean energy policies. Examples are:

• Wind energy: the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) and state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS);
• Solar: state Net Energy Metering (NEM) and the federal investment tax credit (ITC);
• Biofuels: federal excise tax incentives and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS); and,
• EVs: California’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate and federal tax incentives.

Transformative energy policies threaten legacy fossil fuel industries and foreground future stranded assets, yet enacting and sustaining clean energy policies requires considerable political support. The major obstacle to clean energy implementation is primarily political.

While 2025 federal budgets are slashed and workers are fired in the thousands, it must be said that the transition to renewable energy is still widely popular among US residents. Securing legislation to pursue that transition matters for several reasons.

• Private costs and benefits of choosing fossil fuel vs. renewable energy sources and energy consuming technology become more transparent.
• Endorsement for renewables shapes individuals’ rejection of fossil energy and embrace of non-fossil energy.
• Social choices and preferences for policies like the Inflation Reduction Act become a norm.

A leading conservation group filed suit Monday to stop US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk from “gutting” over a dozen of the federal government’s environmental agencies and departments. The Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit targeting Trump’s Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency is “challenging DOGE’s efforts to eviscerate the agencies charged with protecting the environment, natural resources, and wildlife.”

Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center, derided Musk’s claims of waste as rationale for federal environmental agency cuts.

“Elon Musk and his hacker minions are tearing apart the federal agencies that protect our public lands, keep our air and water clean, and conserve our most cherished wildlife. The public has every right to know why they’re waging this cruel war on our environment. Musk has shown that he can and will destroy a federal agency in a single weekend. If his deranged antics are allowed to continue, we might never be able to fix the damage to America’s environment.”

Instead of these political battles, we should be situated at a moment in time in which US bipartisan support focuses on the UN’s Agenda 2030, which supports a set of 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs promote “peace and prosperity for people and the planet” and the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of our civilization. Among its priorities are the health of the planet’s oceans and forests and the overriding threat of human-caused climate change.

Final Thoughts on the Trump–Musk Administration’s Blatant Disinformation

Since establishing DOGE, Musk and a small number of people have unlawfully dismantled the US Agency for International Development, unilaterally terminated federal contracts to further the right-wing cultural agenda, attempted to obtain personal data on virtually every person in the country, and driven the mass firing of thousands of federal workers.

For example, as Heather Cox Richardson explains in her Substack, Americans think the US spends too much on foreign aid — they think the US spends about 25% of the federal budget on foreign aid. Most people feel foreign aid spending should be about 10%. In fact, it spends only about 1% on foreign aid. Part of that public misunderstanding is fueled by social media disinformation.

For example, Musk, CEO of the social media site X, has shared a video falsely claiming that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) paid Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie, and other actors millions of dollars to travel to Ukraine. It appeared to be a clip from E!News. The rub is that the video never appeared on the entertainment channel. Instead, the source is an X account that spreads Russian disinformation.

President Trump’s son Donald Trump, Jr. reposted the disinformation, which came at a time in which Musk promoted the disempowering of USAID. The organization has distributed much of the government’s foreign aid since 1961.

“We live on a foundation of lies,” Stiller said in response to the disinformation campaign.

What started as some politicians and voters questioning the value of foreign aid has morphed into attacks on the agency with distorted facts. In fact, Musk called it “a criminal organization.” Similar unfounded claims spread rapidly across social media, as influencers and politicians with even more followers amplified a false idea.