Elon Musk to Maher: 'Not in Any Danger of Resource Collapse'

Arguably the greatest environmentally conscious innovator of our time, Elon Musk poured cold water on sustainable resources, liberal activism, and censorship in just one interview.

"Resources will be fine," Musk told HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher" in a wide-ranging interview. "I know a lot about resources.

"We do want a sustainable energy economy as quickly as possible, but we're not in any danger of resource collapse."

And, as Bill Maher expressed concern about water, Musk responded with common sense that is not in abundance with climate activists, including Maher.

"Desalination is absurdly cheap," Musk said, reminding Maher that the world remains 70% water and the oceans are readily available to aid humanity's water supply.

"There's plenty of water. It's not an issue. I want to be fair."

Musk had to remind Maher, who himself has emerged as political moderate because of the liberals' push to the left, that he is not exactly a conservative.

"I, at least, think of myself as a moderate," Musk told Maher. "I spent a massive amount of my life energy building sustainable energy electric vehicles and batteries and solar and stuff to help save the environment. That's not exactly far right."

And, Musk continued, censorship has become a concern of all of humanity, leading him to take the financial hit of buying Twitter for $43 billion last year.

"There was a lot of censorship going on, and we've sort of uncovered a lot of it with the Twitter Files, including a lot of government-driven censorship," Musk told Maher.

"It seems like that's got to be some sort of constitutional violation what was going on there. Since I am an avid Twitter user, I can detect something was going on there. Something's not right here, and that's why I did the acquisition.

"It wasn't because I thought it was an easy way to make money or something. It was nothing like that. Me being mayor of tweet town or whatever, it's definitely like there's a lot of arrows pointed at you, flying at you."

Those arrows have mostly been from the left, who only liked the First Amendment and freedom of speech when it involved their speech, Musk lamented.

"Free speech used to be a left or liberal value, you know, from the in-quotes 'left' to a desire to actually censor: That seems crazy," Musk said, warning liberals eager to censor conservative opposition and Biden administration or deep state dissent.

"I really cannot emphasize this enough: We must protect free speech.

"It's only relevant when it's someone you don't like, saying something you don't like. Obviously, when it's speech you like, it's easy.

"The thing about censorship, for those who advocate it, at some point that will be turned on you."

Musk also attacked the "woke mind virus" that has become pervasive on social media and among leftist censors and liberal indoctrinators in education.

"I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that results in the suppression of free speech," Musk said. "So, you know, those are two other aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are very dangerous is that it's anti-meritocratic. You can't question things. Even the questioning is bad. So, you know, another way almost synonymous is cancel culture.

"And obviously people have tried to cancel you many times," Musk joked of Maher.

"I was trying to figure out where it's coming from," he continued. "I think it's actually been a long time brewing in that I think it's been going on for a while.

"The amount of indoctrination that's happening in schools and universities is, I think, far beyond what parents realize. I came to realize this somewhat late: The experience that we had in high school and college is not the experience that kids today are having, and hasn't been for, I don't know, for 10 years, maybe 20 years.

"I suppose in some cases that parents are a bit" at fault for perpetuating the "woke mind virus," he continued, "but I think the parents are just generally not aware of what their kids are being taught, or what they're not being taught."

Musk gave a "woke mind virus" example close to him as a friend who is a farmer and in high school learned only one thing about George Washington, one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S.: "He was a slave owner."

"What else?" Musk recalled the student being asked. "Nothing.

"Like, OK, maybe you should know more than that."

It was why the billionaire took on the added company and long hours to reform Twitter, taking a hit of the social media company losing half its value in a year and causing him relentless opposition from leftist censors.

"I was living in the library of Twitter for awhile," Musk said. "Things are stabilizing now.

"It was on a fast track to bankruptcy, so I had to take drastic action."

Musk vows to use his influence — as he has with SpaceX exploration and Tesla electric vehicles — for the good of humanity.

"Of course, I would never use them for evil," Musk joked.

Musk also joked he hopes he does not get Maher fired. The last Fox News broadcast of Tucker Carlson last Sunday night was with Musk, who hopes he is "not the Typhoid Mary of talk shows — for some reason people just get fired after that."

Notably, though, Musk's downsized and value-shrunken Twitter has outsized influence in the world — as Carlson's ouster video on Twitter trumped all other media in viewership this week.

"Twitter has a tremendous audience," Musk said. "There's 250 million people that spend an average of half an hour there on Twitter. So, it's about 120-130 million user hours per day and it's been increasing.

"We didn't do anything. To be clear: We did nothing special whatsoever. I learned about it afterward that he had posted something on Twitter.

"So, it's just that Twitter has a lot of people's attention. It tends to be the people that read a lot or interested in current events and generally are pretty influential."