Musk Jabs Biden For Climate Change Fixation While ‘Banks Are Melting’

Elon Musk speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 2020. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Twitter CEO Elon Musk appeared to criticize President Joe Biden’s fixation on fighting climate change, suggesting the president’s focus was not where it should be given the crisis roiling the U.S. banking sector.

Biden on Wednesday took to Twitter to tout his administration’s accomplishments in the area of environmental protection and fighting climate change.

“In my first year in office, we protected more lands and waters than any president since John F. Kennedy. We’ve also made the largest investment to fight climate change – ever,” Biden wrote in the message, which came after the White House announced new conservation measures, which included plans to “harness the power of the ocean to fight the climate crisis.”

Musk, who in the past has sounded the alarm on global warming but recently indicated there are bigger problems facing humanity, criticized Biden’s post, suggesting the president’s focus isn’t where it should be given the banking sector jitters.

“Umm ... the banks are melting,” Musk wrote in the comment, presumably referring to the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and several knock-on bank failures that triggered broader concerns about the stability of the U.S. banking sector and led to an increased outflow of uninsured deposits from smaller regional banks.

President Joe Biden speaks with reporters before departing from the South Lawn of the White House on Marine One in Washington on March 17, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

While Musk has championed green energy, he has also been a voice of reason in the transition debate. This includes calling for increased fossil fuel output to ensure ample supply of affordable energy as innovators seek to find cleaner solutions, while saying he opposes moves to “demonize” fossil fuels.

“Realistically I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization will crumble,” Musk said at an event in Norway several months ago. “In order for civilization to function, we do need oil and gas.”

As for Musk’s priorities on climate change, he said in mid-2022 that low birth rates are a bigger problem.

“Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” Musk wrote in a Twitter post, though he added that he does “think global warming is a major risk.”

Some experts have told The Epoch Times that efforts to find clean energy alternatives should be subject to market forces and innovation rather than be imposed top down by the government, while arguing that fears about the impact of global warming were overblown and climate panic was driving an energy crisis.

Others have alleged that behind the Biden administration’s focus on cutting carbon emissions and getting to net-zero is a radical leftist policy agenda that wants to push the economy off its free market foundations and impose greater government control over Americans’ lives.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) (R) speak during a press conference to announce Green New Deal legislation to promote clean energy programs outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7, 2019. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Bank Turmoil

Market sentiment has remained frail after turmoil in the U.S. and European banking sectors in the past two weeks has revived memories of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has this week tried to calm frayed investor nerves, telling the American Bankers Association conference on Tuesday that deposit outflows from regional banks have stabilized and that the U.S. banking system “remains sound.”

During a Thursday hearing before the House Appropriations subcommittee, Yellen again sought to send a reassuring message, saying that U.S. financial authorities are prepared to take further steps to make sure Americans’ bank deposits stay safe amid turmoil in the banking system.

“As I have said, we have used important tools to act quickly to prevent contagion,” Yellen said.

“These are tools we could use again for an institution of any size if we judged its failure would pose a systemic risk,” she added.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen takes her seat as she arrives for a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 10, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

There have been concerns about the health of U.S. lenders and the economic impact of a potential lending crunch if depositors rush to withdraw their savings from smaller banks, which have outsized roles in supporting key sectors such as commercial real estate.

Following the failure of SVB and Signature Bank, the Federal Reserve set up a swap line under preferential borrowing conditions to give banks access to ample liquidity to meet depositor demand for withdrawals, a move meant to calm depositors and prevent bank runs.

Acting on the basis of a special “systemic risk exception” for the two failed banks, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) expanded its $250,000 deposit guarantee cap for SVB and Signature to cover all uninsured deposits in a further bid to shore up financial stability.

While there have been calls for the FDIC to expand this unlimited “blanket guarantee” of deposits to the entire banking sector as a temporary measure to instill further confidence, Yellen said there were no immediate plans to do so.

Still, Yellen said at the American Bankers Association conference that similar actions to the blanket guarantee for SVB and Signature deposits “could be warranted if smaller institutions suffer deposit runs.”

Musk also addressed the elevated risk of regional bank turmoil in a recent reaction to a post by Zerohedge that warned of “another great depression” if the Federal Reserve fails to contain the turmoil in regional banks.

“This is a serious risk,” Musk commented.