The title is symptomatic for the climate discourse; either for or against oil/coal and wind/solar. I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.
I know that is both an idealistic and hyperbolic take on things. The bigger point is that when people say "affordable", they often really mean "profitable". But we cannot afford not to fix the problems.
By definition, sustainability is a waste management, that allows recycling rates of 90% or higher. CO2 is just one of our waste products we totally didnt care about.
How much of the GDP should we be willing to spend to actively replace pollution generating energy plants with lower polluting alternatives?
What, you mean like the existing WEEE directive which requires all electronics to be lead-free and recyclable? China would, obviously, start selling repairable and recyclable products into those markets.
Sorry, wrong. The Apollo program cost about $25B in 1960's dollars. That's over the entire period, not just one year.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190712-apollo-in-50-num...
"In 1965, Nasa funding peaked at some 5% of government spending,"
But government spending != GDP.
According to this,
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-...
GDP in 1965 was $743B
... so the question stands. How much are we willing to spend, and do we think it will actually damage either the economy or people's quality-of-life (when having a major industrial project in fact creates job and business opportunities, historically speaking)?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1022937/history-nasa-bud...
1965 NASA budget in billions: $5.25 (the peak year)
1965 GDP: $743 billion
giving us a NASA budget of 0.007 of GDP, or 0.7%
The fossil fuel industry receives $760 billion in subsidy. We're already spending more on energy; we're just spending it on the wrong energy.
5B is for 1965 alone, the peak year. As I said.
25B is the total over all years.
Now about the point, which is "How much should we be willing to spend on something that may be life-or-death for much of humanity?"
Because, again, $760 billion in fossil fuel subsidy. A tenth of that for renewables.
It was pretty easy to look up NASA budgets and GDP's. I haven't studied energy subsidies, though, so maybe someone else wants to jump in.
"Clean" and "affordable" map immediately and obviously onto wind and solar; what then happens is people engage in a lot of wrangling around "reliable" to push nuclear, requiring bending both "clean" and "affordable" quite a bit and running into an invisible other criteria of "quick to deploy" and "politically acceptable".
But the OP's question is loaded too. We don't need "reliable" right now. Fossil fuel can cover the reliability gap on the short term perfectly well. Until the question becomes "well, we replaced all the peak consumption with renewables, now what?", asking for reliability is status-quo propaganda.
Speaking of countries, I could reduce this answer to one word, which refutes every single point you make: France.
And the EDF reactor project in the UK is of course overrunning on time and budget.
(when is the next French nuclear reactor new build scheduled to come on line?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
It's now behind. Basically no one wants to fund new nuclear plants. They're incredibly risky considering how front-loaded the cost is.
> I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.
Seems to me like examining externalities of different energy sources is a part of the nuance of this question. Feels like you're being a bit of a hater.
In the context of "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?", we need to address that whatever we pick will necessarily hurt somebody's bottom line, and they will dig in and fight tooth and nail to prevent that happening, even if their livelihood is at the expense of the species. So rationally addressing a bad faith argument against many options that answer your question is, I think, worthwhile.