This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A federal judge in South Carolina ruled this week that the Trump administration’s termination of environmental justice grants was “illegal.” The decision dealt a setback to efforts to dismantle a Biden-era program that funded projects addressing environmental and public health challenges […]
Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Friday with the largest initial public offering in stock market history for his rocket and AI company SpaceX. The company is based in South Texas in a city controlled by Musk known as Starbase, which SpaceX has operated from since 2014. Environmental and conservation groups recently filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block a land swap approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that would give SpaceX more than 700 acres of a national wildlife refuge in South Texas.
With Starbase, “SpaceX has already burned down dozens of acres of wildlife habitat, is dumping polluted water on our beach, has sent rocket debris into our communities, into communities in Mexico,” says Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, which is part of the lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Elon Musk is using our impoverished community as his laboratory to blow up dangerous experimental SpaceX rockets.”
While groups like the South Texas Environmental Justice Network are organizing opposition to Musk’s operations in South Texas, local officials are ignoring constituents’ complaints that SpaceX is degrading the environment and their quality of life, says Hinojosa. “We’ve seen elected officials take money from SpaceX here and lobby in favor of more bills that benefit SpaceX.”
Electric utilities don’t make money from selling power to customers, but instead profit from investments in power plants, wires, substations and other equipment.