Elon Musk Gloats as Trump Announces Billionaires Will Be Exempt From Normal Environmental Rules

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is dancing with joy now that his new father figure Donald Trump has promised him that he will no longer have to abide by the pesky environmental rules that apply to lowly commoners.

On Tuesday, president-elect Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post that any “person or company” investing $1 billion or more in the US would “receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental [sic] approvals.”

“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Trump exclaimed.

“This is awesome,” gloated Musk, the world’s richest man, on Twitter-formerly-X, which he also owns.

The unusual pronouncement makes it sound as though there will soon be two sets of environmental rules in the US: one for the wealthy, and one for everybody else.

The initiative — if it actually happens, which is always a question with Trump — will also likely dovetail with his efforts to roll back environmental protections to pave the way for fossil fuel production.

Trump’s pick for Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, is a climate change skeptic, which means we should expect an even bigger emphasis on oil and gas production.

Meanwhile, the president-elect has called for the US to “drill, baby, drill,” while calling the environmental protection initiative known as the Green New Deal the “green new scam” and a “waste” of money.

For his part, Musk has increasingly turned a blind eye to protecting the environment as his public politics have shifted.

Previously, the billionaire had vowed to “expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution” in his 2006 “Secret Master Plan” climate manifesto — which was quietly deleted from the EV maker’s website earlier this year.

Musk, who was once hailed as a pioneer in our efforts to electrify cars to save humankind from climate change, has become a poster child for flouting environmental rules. Just last month, the Wall Street Journal found that Tesla’s factory in Austin had been leaking hazardous wastewater into the city’s sewer, violating local environmental guidelines.

SpaceX’s operations at its “Starbase” in South Texas have also repeatedly run afoul of environmental rules by threatening a nearby nature reserve, including the wildlife that lives there, with its thunderous Starship rocket launches.

The space company was sued in October over unpermitted wastewater discharges.

That’s not to mention the chemicals that many researchers believe SpaceX’s thousands of Starlink satellites are releasing in the Earth’s upper atmosphere as they burn up after their useful lives, a strain on the environment that scientists are only beginning to understand.

Musk has also railed against the Federal Aviation Administration, with SpaceX suing the regulator for “regulatory overreach.”

In a bigger sense, Trump is also saying the quiet part out loud by announcing that only companies with a billion dollars to throw around will be allowed to flout environmental rules, leaving everyone else out in the cold.

In other words, the richest men in the world are being served even more rights on a silver platter — at the expense of the American people who will suffer the consequences.

“What about us small business owners?” one X user replied to Musk.

More on SpaceX and the environment: Elon Musk Slammed for Filling Orbit With Space Junk