Can anyone explain why we needed to spend $3 Trillion dollars over the past 40 years, protecting SA /ME

[Igel]

4. Solar 40 years ago was pathetic.

Wind, not much better.

For solar, a lot of the breakthroughs came from research that wouldn't have been possible 40 years ago--materials resulting from unrelated research, techniques and knowledge not being sought were needed. And even then, it was a quiet scandal maybe 5, 10 years ago that with advancements in solar tech a lot of solar panels installed 15, 20 years ago with 30-year lifetimes and carbon/energy 'green' calculations based on that life time were being replaced way early because the economics made sense--roll the existing debt over while incurring new debt with far more efficient solar panels. (Of course, the only 'green' calculations that were done were those going forward, they wrote off the 'debt' from retiring still useful but inefficient tech.)

Could have done nuclear, but that was considered evil. After 3MI the goal was to produce such a regulatory thicket against implementing then-extant technologies that a new plant would take decades to get permissions to build, with a strong bias against new technologies. And it worked splendidly.

In Germany, as they were phasing out Russian methane they were shutting down nuclear power plants as "evil" and anti-environmental, hoisting electricity rates, causing shortages so that factories had to go idle at times.