Of the educated people who are concerned about climate change, musk seems to be the only one taking a practical "let's do something about it in a very large way". Solving the problem is worth many trillions of dollars (it's literally a future with dollars vs a future without). If he is successful, he'll become that trillionaire, and it's something he's earned.
It's amazing to think that his businesses all revolve around saving the human race... -- SpaceX is designed with the mission of getting a colony on Mars as a backup for humanity. Solar and Tesla are designed to save the planet we now live on.
i think its more of a thing that happened in retrospect. Tesla was not started by him and neither was Solar City. And SpaceX only came about because we wanted to see how we can grow plants on Mars. So even his vision of Mars as a contingency for humans is something that got derived over the years.
I guess it's just good luck for him that his interests did somehow connect together really well.
I've always imagined that the first trillionaire will be the person responsible for asteroid mining – and SpaceX does seem to have a good shot at doing that.
