Tesla’s “semi-sentient” cars cannot replace the sentient life their infrastructure overruns. Animals can’t defend themselves from lithium extraction. Fragile ecosystems have little recourse against Tesla—or “green” tech’s cheap access to sensitive lands in general.
Meanwhile, Musk continues to craft ecological and social justifications to burrow into key facets of modern life. Now the Teslaspreading is taking up all of Twitter.
Read more on CounterPunch today.
Teslaspreading. Has anyone coined that word? It seems apt, as Tesla-related undertakings encompass ever more space in the tech world, the popular imagination, and in space itself.
Steering Tesla, SpaceX and other projects in the U.S. and beyond, Elon Musk is both a business leader and an engaged engineer — and, since March 2021, a self-crowned Technoking.
While Bill Gates is the subject of conspiracy theories about microchips in vaccines, Elon Musk’s brain-chipping project isn’t a mere disinformation narrative. Musk really wants to put computer chips in our brains. Rest assured they’ll fit quite nicely in our skulls.
Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016. Since then, the company has put coin-sized chips called Links into the brains of pigs. A live pig demo appears in this August 2020 video. Look out for Musk’s “three little pigs” quip and other wisecracks.
Here’s how Inverse describes the scene:
On August 28, Musk and his team unveiled the latest updates from secretive firm Neuralink with a demo featuring pigs implanted with their brain chip device. These chips are called Links, and they measure 0.9 inches wide by 0.3 inches tall. They connect to the brain via wires, and provide a battery life of 12 hours per charge, after which the user would need to wirelessly charge again. During the demo, a screen showed the real-time spikes of neurons firing in the brain of one pig, Gertrude, as she snuffed around her pen during the event.
Musk thinks brain-machine connections could be life-changing for people with disabilities. Would this technology connect with demand for Tesla cars, too? Seems so. During the pig spectacle a Twitter user submitted a question on the possibility of chipped car owners summoning their Teslas telepathically. Musk’s reply? “Of course.” Teslaspread strikes again.
Elon Musk predicts artificial intelligence will be ahead of humans before 2025. In the hands of the wrong company, AI will become a menace. That, says Musk, will be when “things get unstable or weird.”
Yet Musk’s company is the one wiring monkeys’ brains.
Musk says:
The primates “look totally happy.”
A USDA inspector called Neuralink “the nicest monkey facilities” around.
The Teslasplaining continues: “We went the extra mile for the monkeys.”
And another thing:
“One of the things we’re trying to figure out: can we have the monkeys playing mind Pong with each other? That would be pretty cool.”
Do we need artificial intelligence to tell us it’s uncool to toy with the brains of other aware beings?
Do we need AI to tell us it’s uncool to toy with the brains of other aware beings?
And what’s the nicest monkey facility? A Thai seacoast. A mangrove forest… It would be really cool to leave primates in the spaces where they’ve evolved, rather than catching them, purpose-breeding them, confining them in prison for life.
The Tesla T logo appears in a recent patent filing for use in restaurant services. Why would Tesla get into food services? Perhaps to turn a battery charging wait into an entertaining experience, and another profit channel. Charging station restaurants would be open to other electric vehicle drivers — marketing Tesla cars to the curious.
With guidance from Kitchen Restaurant Group founder Kimbal Musk, Elon’s younger sibling, the new restaurants might be more nutrition-focused than standard convenience stores — but probably not vegan. Elon Musk has said veganism won’t solve global warming, because the greenhouse gas problem is chiefly about “moving billions of tons of hydrocarbons from deep underground into the atmosphere and oceans.”
So, Elon Musk evidently believes oil-extracting industries must be replaced, yet animal breeding for human consumption should be free to continue.
Both forms of divestment matter: divestment from hydrocarbon energy, and divestment from animal-derived protein. Animal agribusiness is a massive source of greenhouse gases. Musk’s restaurants ought to reject animal products or face urgent criticism. Those of us with the privilege to make the shift must divest from animal agribusiness.
Those of us with the privilege to make the shift must divest from animal agribusiness.
Tesla Energy is collaborating with Brookfield Asset Management and Dacra to create SunHouse in Austin, Texas. The developers call it “the nation’s most sustainable residential community” and an “energy-neutral” model for “sustainable large-scale housing projects around the world.”
Can the widespread development of land to house a burgeoning human population accurately be called “sustainable”? In any case, we can assume the homes will be lucrative, especially if buyers sign up for Tesla energy subscriptions. As Elon Musk said:
The feedback we get from the solar and battery products used in this community will impact how we develop and launch new products.
Alset EHome International also works with Tesla. Home buyers at its Northpark development in Texas get Tesla battery storage and car charging equipment — and Tesla cars. Remember when we wanted the cereal with the toy in the box?
The point of the prizes is “to promote the use of electric vehicles for a sustainable lifestyle.” Teslaspread strikes again.
Tesla’s solar residential developments could supply electricity to surrounding areas. In some sense, this is about breaking through the utility companies’ hold on practices and pricing. It’s deregulation. It’s also development. It’s mining for electronic components. It’s the despoiling of habitat, and it will continue (as long as everyone’s using something other than coal or petroleum).
Musk’s Boring Company is all about Teslas in tunnels. Tunnel-making means bulldozing the subterranean Earth, exposing carbon to oxygen and sending CO₂ into the atmosphere. Studies of tunnels note their heavy use of materials, equipment, and energy. And, of course, the soil is full of living beings.
Florida groundnesting communities include native bees and birds already threatened by existing land use, floods and rising sea levels. Yet Fort Lauderdale sees the Boring Company as an answer to heavy coastal traffic. Building alternative traffic conduits will need road-building resources and places to park all the more cars.
Sure, underground trains use tunnels, too. But they carry a lot of people per car, reducing vehicle numbers rather than increasing them.
For years, I’ve kept my driving below 1,000 miles (1600 km) each year. Not only for the sake of cutting emissions, but also because I’m just not keen on driving any more. Too much Earth is paved over for human convenience. In the era of remote work, I rarely need to drive, but a few good friends live in areas only a car can reach.
Tesla will roll out $25,000 (€21,000) cars in a few years. They already sell used ones. Tesla’s driver-assist technology could enable me to drive at night, say, if one of the cats has a medical emergency, or if I do, or if I leave a friend’s home after sunset. I’d buy a Tesla for the reason I get prescription glasses: to better handle elements of living that matter to me.
And yet, as Neuralink takes my sense of human “need” to its logical conclusion, I feel queasier than ever about my relationship with cars. I’m just one of many night-vision-challenged people who will drive after dark if technology allows it. Surely more 16-year-olds and partygoers will do the same, thanks to high-tech accident-prevention features. That’s a lot more driving, right?
Tesla’s slowly rolling out computer vision-based full-self-driving (FSD) subscriptions. Sometime in the future, cars will drive, so people can pay attention to other things. Yet another selling point for driving. Imagine a family taking a bucket-list national park trip every month. As Tesla encourages more people to drive more of the time, its sustainability credentials will become increasingly absurd.
As Tesla encourages more people to drive more of the time, its sustainability credentials will become increasingly absurd.
Morgan Stanley expects Tesla to produce flying cars by blending Tesla and SpaceX technology. It’s one reason an analyst at the investment firm speculates that Tesla stock will reach $1000 a share. Never mind asking why we might need cars that fly. Teslaspreading means consumer culture stays, whatever the climate does. Along with groups such as Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab, it’s extending that culture through space commerce. (Heaven help any extraterrestrial beings out there. Musk might try to go the extra mile for them.)
Solar power and software subscriptions create income streams for Tesla. In business terms, that’s a successful turnaround of the climate narrative. Yet factories have to be built and materials have to be dug up for it all. Already, humans together with our domesticated animals consume more resources by summer than the can replenish in an entire year. Meanwhile, Earth’s untamed living communities are pushed aside and fading fast.
Writing this series is changing me. I wouldn’t say it’s unforgivable for any of us to buy a Tesla. But the uneasiness is gaining on me. What are we doing to cut resource use, create walkable towns, improve public transportation, and protect habitat? Innovation, without deep restorative principles, encourages humanity to take up ever more resources, and ever more space. That’s unsustainable.
Part I of this series (Tesla cars overview) is here. Part II of this series (SpaceX) is here.
Thanks to: Bill Drelles, Janine Bandcroft, Pam Page, Lydia and Mauro, Chris Kelly, and Charlotte Cressey. Each provided essential support, comments that improved this series, or both.
This blog generally benefits from the support of Jack McMillan, Justin and Rosemary, Aurora Cooney, Amanda Crow, Van Luong, Kay Connacher, Nancy Kogel, Lois Baum, Mary Ann Baron, Deb Thompson, Curtis Hinkle, Project Animal Freedom, the Vegan Justice League, Mary Jo Wenckus, Allen Eckert, Cecilia Eckert, Vance Lehmkuhl, Jesse Farrell, Michael Harren, Maureen Schiener, LouAnne and Michael, Sandie Sajner, Patricia Fairey, Laura Reese, Ellie Moffat, Catherine Burt, Catherine Podojil, Paula Franklin, Nelli Johnson, Meg Graney, and Jaime, Steve, and Jackson Mazurek.
Neuralink pig pen photo: Leijurv, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
And now, cheered on by the American Petroleum Institute, the Trump administration just signed its permission to let oil and gas developers despoil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—a biological wonderland, with its tundra bees and polar bears, black bears and grizzlies, Porcupine caribou and ancient musk oxen.
The Trump administration’s push to exploit the Arctic Refuge isn’t just obscene; it’s ludicrous. Who will be beating down the door to the Arctic?
BP ditched Alaska in 2019 and is now selling off fossil fuel assets. The company is $41 billion in debt and now must spend much of what it has on its belated conversion to renewables.
Which brings up the bizarre scenario of BP becoming a world leader in green energy.
Read on, at CounterPunch.
Conversation with Caryn Hartglass
Caryn Hartglass has given reprint permission for this 2014 interview with me on the show It’s All About Food. This transcript is proofed and edited for Vegan Place. Original podcast and transcript, titled Animals, Environment, and the Law, appears on the REAL Radio site.
INTRO:
Lee Hall, an author who’s taken on subjects from anti-terrorism law to vegan cooking, wrote the “Vegetarianism” entry in the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. Lee has taught Animal Law and Immigration and Refugee Law, and is today working on a second law degree—a legal masters in Environmental Law with a focus on climate change from Vermont Law School. Lee’s work is a bridge between environmentalism and our personal relationships with agriculture, confronting the way animal farming usurps habitat. For years, animal-rights advocates have operated under the belief that at least pasture-based or organic ranching represents a “step” in the humane direction—but only looking at how domesticated animals seem to be affected. Lee champions the animal communities displaced by farm sprawl, and explains how our chosen cookbooks can offer a genuine humane response for all animals, reduce greenhouse emissions, and even stop extinctions.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Lee Hall, Welcome to It’s All About Food.
Lee Hall: Thank you, Caryn. It seems to be perfect timing given that you’re the Lone Vegan ready to speak with two hundred cattle ranchers.
Caryn Hartglass: I know, I was hoping that you would give me some really good tips for Saturday.
Lee Hall: I am imagining that we are going to have quite a good conversation given that we are both studying the same thing right now.
Caryn Hartglass: I know. And the first thing I wanted to ask you, I’ve been following you and your work for a long time and it’s incredible and the thing that I know about you is your intensity, your passion, how principled you are.
Lee Hall: Thank you.
Caryn Hartglass: And I wondered were you born that way, or was there something that happened in your life that made that happen, or was it a slow process, or none of the above.
Lee Hall: Well, I wasn’t born that way. I actually saw a bullfight when I was a child and it didn’t change me. I look back on it—and maybe it did, ultimately. I look back on it and I think why didn’t that change me, witnessing a bullfight; I mean, the bull was killed. This was in Mexico. My parents worked there they got free tickets from a business associate. Right, so we went and saw the novicios, who are the people that are learning to do bullfights. Which I understand is more difficult to watch. I wouldn’t know; I’ve only seen this particular instance. And I was—I hid myself in the bathroom for over a day. I wouldn’t come out after it. And what I guess I thought was weirdest—as terrible as this was, as traumatic as it was to see and hear people standing up and cheering for the slow death of an animal, not to mention what the horses were going through in the ring—of all of the horrific feelings of this the very worst was that I was surrounded by hundreds of people that were cheering.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah.
Lee Hall: And so here I am locking myself in the bathroom and I remember trying to make a soap carving for hours and I heard my mother trying to get me out of the bathroom, saying “It’s all right, the meat, the flesh of the bull will go to the poor children of Mexico.” My mother knew I was very concerned about poverty; I did have a feeling of social justice as a little kid, as I think most little kids do. But, I think back and the tie: right there, my mother telling me. Of course that didn’t help me feel better that they were going to eat the bull. But: why didn’t I connect as a child? What didn’t I connect? And I know people who see an animal killed and immediately they put it all together.
Caryn Hartglass: Most don’t.
Lee Hall: Most don’t. It takes—I don’t know what happens. I don’t know how. If I knew how to make this all work, I would tell you. But, I was 21 and I met Robin Lane who is now the co-facilitator/founder of the London Vegan Festival, the longest running vegan festival anywhere in the world. It is the one that inspired all the vegan festivals to come. This was long before that had been started.
Robin Lane in London had been vegan for 1 year and met me. As far we know, I am Robin’s longest running protégé. It was a leaflet. It was all the ways we use animals. And I considered myself a feminist—it was one of the areas I was reading about myself; and something just clicked then and there. It was: How can I think about oppression and want to get over oppression and want to transcend that in my life and get over that in my life and be working so hard mentally to transcend differences and hierarchies—and how have I not noticed this before? Then of course the bullfight came back to me. But, I just said, that will be it! So I’m one of the weird people that did decide to go vegan all at once.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, for the weird people. Let’s hear it for socially peculiar. Yeah! Making the world a better place.
Lee Hall: So that was 31 years ago.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. Good for you. I just wonder, because I want to think that we all have the potential to not exploit to not cause pain and suffering; I want to believe that. And I want to believe that we are not born with one kind of DNA that makes us more compassionate then others. I want to think that we are all flexible and once the veil is lifted we can move on and do better.
Lee Hall: Well, I think that is true, Caryn. I was that person until I was 21 and I knew and I didn’t change. So look at other people as people who could change any day. You have had Harold Brown on the show?
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah.
Lee Hall: That is a wonderful example. Harold came from a dairy and beef farming family and would have been a successful dairy and beef farmer today and had been doing that for many, many years, and a light bulb—this is also somebody that had been hunting regularly.
Caryn Hartglass: Yes. You are in environmental law now. I want to talk more about animals and the environment. And one of the things we are hearing about is people that care about the environment and seem to have more compassion for animals. They want to go for the—quote—more humane ways of raising animals for food, pasture grazing; and I am doing my studying for this climate change talk. There is this guy on the panel that believes in animal agriculture intensification because unfortunately we have learned that animal agriculture intensification is—quote—more efficient and produces less greenhouse gases when you are cramming this animals in small space and feeding them the wrong foods. But nobody talks about the things that are wrong with it. But it’s encouraging this horror instead of the other way around. And let’s just talk about how all these other things affect the environment.
Lee Hall: Let’s talk about that. It’s a very interesting sort of squeeze that you bring up. You mentioned that the intensify of farming can be controlled in a way that it is less of an emitter of greenhouse gases, that it takes up less space environmentally, these kinds of things. That is a very significant point to bring up. I think a lot of advocates want to think that everything about factory farms is wrong and that’s the answer and we just say that. Just say factory farms. We are saying something that of course everyone understands. Of course it is all kinds of animal farms, the problem we are dealing with. It’s animal farming; it’s not factory farming, certainly not factory farming per se. It’s animal farming: any kind of animal farming has its problems. We, as animal advocates or environmental advocates, we understand sprawl. We understand sprawl and yet we don’t see it when it is happening with farms that are being spread out. We’ll say: `Well, that is a step in the right direction.` Well, how can that be, if we in the United States are outnumbered by farmland animals, 5 to 1? So, how could it be that the problem is intensive farming? That it is a step in the right direction to have the pasture-based farms when walking around, three hundred million of us in this country, and we are outnumbered 5 to 1, and that is just the land farm animals? So the problem isn’t the factory. The problem is both. If you have concentrated farms you have dense runoff, you have emissions—you do have emissions, and they may be controlling them to some extent but they are still there—you still have ruminant animals, and they are emitting methane. There is fine particulate matter that goes up to the air, and all the things that lead to acid rain.
Caryn Hartglass: And they still make manure, piles of it.
Lee Hall: No matter how they are raised. If you’ve got farm expansion…
Caryn Hartglass: The shit continues.
Lee Hall: It’s in either one. When you’ve got the expanded farms, the pasture-based, the grass-fed, you’ve got other situations. The destruction, and of course, with the intensive farm you have all the humane questions—the whole idea that humanity would treat animals as things to put into tiny boxes that is there—but when you have expansion, at the end we kill them, so it is a myth that it can be humane, because they are being slaughtered at the end. But there is more: when you expand the farm you are fragmenting habitat. You are setting the stage for systematic predator control, followed by a cascade of consequences.
Caryn Hartglass: Wait a minute. What is systematic predator control?
Bobcat. On pastures, “free-range” farm animals are captive targets of undomesticated predators; in turn, the predators become persecuted by your local animal farmers and their supporting agencies.
Lee Hall: Well, for example, coyotes and foxes are the animals who are normally targeted.With coyotes in pastures, they are irritating to farmers. Obviously. A coyote, bobcat, fox, a grizzly bear is going to be tempted, understandably, to eat an animal; so the more free-range the farm is, the more vulnerable they are…Shooting coyotes is legal in most places; coyotes can be shot from aircraft; there are forms of poison. The very first coyote synthetic attractant, a lure to attract and kill them, debuted in 1973 and was made from the fatty acids of rhesus monkeys’ vaginal secretions. Since then we have come up with all kinds of traps and lures to attract coyotes and foxes. One infamous one called Compound 1080 goes into predacide collars, and those are strapped to free-range goats and lambs. So here is this poison: it will not save the goat or the lamb; the point is the coyote goes to the animal and if the coyote bites the neck of that farm animal that coyote is about to enter Hell. The poison takes somewhere between 3 and 15 hours to kill. Then there are the traps, the snares, the M44—another lure. Wildlife Services, our federal government, helps the ranchers. These poisons are often picked up by pets, bald eagles, turkey vultures, wolves—unintended animals. Migratory birds, porcupines, mountain lions. So all these things are happening out there with these free-range farms. To say “Well, stop factory farming” totally ignores that.
Caryn Hartglass: Wow, and who thinks up these things? Who thinks up these poisons and these traps? The thing I was wondering about is who are these scientists, these educated scientists that invent these incredible killing materials? The minds that come up with these things …Yes. So there are all these “compassionate” people, who want to get humanely-raised animals and go for pastures. But there are all these issues with that. Of course, there are the intensified farms and there are all animal farms and when we look at it from an environmental point of view the winner is the one no one is looking at, which is feeding plants to people directly.
The winner. Design by nonviolenceunited.org
Lee Hall: Exactly. People are looking at it, just maybe not in a way that connects it directly to their plate. I am in school now studying with scientists and lawyers. I am seeing that the people in environment law course are aware. For example: There is a study by Christopher Weber and Scott Matthews at Carnegie Mellon and they have done calculations of greenhouse gas emissions and they have said a “protein shift”—and that is their word for it, when you get protein and nutrients directly from plants instead of feeding it to animals and getting all the nutrients through them—when you do this protein shift one day a week it would be like driving 1,160 miles less every year. What they are talking about is sort of like a vegan Monday. They are saying: Replace meat and dairy and this is what would happen 1,160 less miles a year. So that suggests that animal agribusiness per se is non-local…
If you cut it out even one day it would be more than a thousand miles saved driving so right there they are getting somewhere. So this is what I bring up when we are having these conversations: Wait a minute! That means a 7-day-a-week shift is more than eight thousand miles as though you were not driving every year, more than eight thousand miles. If you have that kind of power that a vegan diet can have, and anyone can have that kind of power, and they can have it a dinnertime, they could decide right now, why not? Being vegan in North America is not a real big difficulty, and it would decrease all of this harm all of these climate chaos caused by the taking away of habitat of other animals. It’s ranching: taking away the other animals’ habitat is what it does. In the last five hundred years more animals have gone extinct in the US, more than any other place; we are wrecking this land and water for ranching.
Caryn Hartglass: You know this show is called It’s All About Food but it’s really all about money, and the animal food industry is a 160-billion-dollar-a-year industry in the US, and I think I am going to be talking to these cattle producers and telling them we need to reduce or eliminate animal livestock, and I am getting right to the heart of their livelihood. What do we tell people like that?
Lee Hall: Right. There has always been forms of livelihood that the economy has depended on that we had to say: There is a problem with this. We need to transcend this, and start acting differently. You can think of three or four examples right now. The chocolate slavery is not okay. It comes from massive chocolate companies and they are selling loads and loads of chocolate at the expense of people on the Ivory Coast that are selling their children into slavery. It’s not okay.
Caryn Hartglass: It’s not okay. But you know most people don’t know about it. It has taken a long time to get Hershey’s Chocolate to budge.
Lee Hall: Yes. And when you are out there talking to two hundred cattle ranchers, you have people that are talking to many, many more. … A lot of people, including environmentalists, need to know this it is not just the cattle ranchers that you are informing, that you are having these conversations with; you are talking about getting to a tipping point. And because climate change is upon us, we may be right about at the tipping point.
Caryn Hartglass: There are plenty of people, and there is one guy on the panel that I will be talking to is a climate change denier. And doesn’t believe it is happening.
Lee Hall: Yes. Who is now connected to the Food and Agriculture representing the UN.
Caryn Hartglass: And it is really hard to know. We live in a very complex world. There is a lot of information on the Internet but it takes a lot to figure out what is credible and what is not; I can’t go into every lab and see what they are doing. When I read things in a study, that I think are interesting. I will go to the original source and read all I can when the study was done and see if I think it was good or not if it is something that I want to repeat. Most people don’t do that. But still I can’t see everything….
Lee Hall: We do know that the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere is at the highest point in more than 600 thousand years. We do know that global average temperatures, even though they fluctuate madly, are higher than they have been over ten thousand years.
Caryn Hartglass: There are people that do not believe that. I have seen that data and I believe it. But some people see it and still say they do not believe it.
Lee Hall: Well, it is becoming a part of policy.
Caryn Hartglass: There are—95% of climate change scientists that think the climate is changing.
Lee Hall: It becomes: how much it is from animal farming? And the consensus seems to be about 1/5 but as you know specialists from the world bank including Robert Goodland, who unfortunately passed away recently, had said more like 51% is attributable to animal agribusiness. So Mark Bittman invited Robert Goodland to do a blog on Mark Bittman’s column for the New York Times, and Robert Goodland wrote: One might expect the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to work objectively to determine whether the true figure is 1/5 or 51%. Instead, Mittloehner, known for the claiming that the 1/5th is too big of a figure to use in the US, was announced as chair of a new partnership between the meat industry and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. So Mark Bittman titled that guest blog FAO Yields to Meat Industry Pressure on Climate Change; it is very frightening .
Caryn Hartglass: It is frightening. We are going to have to talk about this more another time because we are out of time. Can you believe it?
Lee Hall: No.
Caryn Hartglass: I know. I am going to have to have you back and dig more into this, especially after I am on this panel with Frank Mittloehner and see what he has to say. Lee, thank you so much for joining us for this have hour as for all the work you are doing some time soon and we can have some delicious food vegan food the best.
Lee Hall: Wonderful Idea. Meanwhile, I am rooting for the Lone Vegan.
Caryn Hartglass: We have come to the end of It’s All About Food. Thank you for joining me. I am Caryn, and remember: Please have a delicious week.
Caryn Hartglass
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Cancer survivor and vegan activist Caryn Hartglass founded Responsible Eating And Living (REAL) as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation. For 9 years Hartglass served as Executive Director of the nonprofit EarthSave International, founded by John Robbins. Hartglass has appeared on Dr. Oz, Geraldo At Large, 20-20 and CNN and is the host of It’s All About Food on the Progressive Radio Network. Caryn Hartglass can multitask, showing your group how to make healthy, delicious foods, while inspiring you to do so. Have Caryn Hartglass speak at your next event. For more information send email to info@RealMeals.org or call 657- I M 4 REAL (657-464-7325).
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