* It is difficult, no doubt. But it is also difficult to find a way to efficienlty store solar and wind power. It is difficult is not a good excuse not to do it.
* It does not help innovation. Not true. It does. Taxes will lower the margins of the businesses with externalities and capital holders will look for more efficient technologies. Less cost and/or more profit are the only way you incentivate innovation.
* Energy is cheap. That doesn't mean it couldn't be cheaper. I mean, I prefer to spend my money on what I like, not on energy bills. And again, cheapER, bettER, are the real incentive to innovation.
* Politics. Don't know, don't care. If I had to go with politics, I'd say that solar and wind are mainly politics: it helps with votes and reputation, but only that (at least now).
* Nuclear. There is research also there. There has been progress for decades. Why that research is not as good as the one for solar and wind power I don't understand.
Fair enough - but not caring about this will leave you unable to fix serious problems, and incurably unhappy with the state of the world. Every problem, every issue, every project of non-trivial size is critically dependent upon politics of some stripe or other. History is riddled with excellent ideas that failed because they didn't consider politics (and for that matter, terrible ideas that succeeded because they did).
I agree with you that the public revulsion over nuclear power is unwarranted - but that battle is lost. No reasoned argument can hope to win over emotive shots of Chernobyl and Fukushima. We have to look forward.
Engineering is about achieving goals within constraints. Good engineering takes political constraints into account as well as technical and budgetary ones.
Addendum
Whoever is downvoting this guy, STOP. You might disagree with him, but he is promoting a debate in a civilised manner, and that's how we move forward.
You are right. But we still need to keep in mind that what's happening makes no sense. We need to know what the real, un-politic, solution is, otherwise we don't even know how and where to compromise. More public spending is not ground for compromises. We are gambling with our future packing debt on debt with silly ideas (like this one that throwing money at pig farmers to raise wind towers is going to save our energy-hungry asses). That's not going to happen and we will pay for this bad decision making in the future.
Said taxes can just as easily destroy the capital holders you claim will go looking for other investments. It's a fluid pool, you can't suck a billion out of the private economy without impacting all other private capital.
And that is all premised on getting the taxes right. If you miss in the guess work, you'll cause massive damage and dislocation of capital. The US has done that on numerous occasions (eg ethanol 1970s).
Energy is politics. There's really no other industry on the entire planet that is more defined by politics due to its importance and nature (from land for solar to drilling in Nigeria, to tar sands in Canada, to windmills killing birds and on and on).
If you don't know and don't care about politics when it comes to energy, then you're going to get nowhere.
* It is difficult, no doubt. But it is also difficult to find a way to efficienlty store solar and wind power. It is difficult is not a good excuse not to do it.
* It does not help innovation. Not true. It does. Taxes will lower the margins of the businesses with externalities and capital holders will look for more efficient technologies. Less cost and/or more profit are the only way you incentivate innovation.
* Energy is cheap. That doesn't mean it couldn't be cheaper. I mean, I prefer to spend my money on what I like, not on energy bills. And again, cheapER, bettER, are the real incentive to innovation.
* Politics. Don't know, don't care. If I had to go with politics, I'd say that solar and wind are mainly politics: it helps with votes and reputation, but only that (at least now).
* Nuclear. There is research also there. There has been progress for decades. Why that research is not as good as the one for solar and wind power I don't understand.