If you want one good reason why there are not more resources of Renewable Energy in industrialised countries, you could simply look at the amount of Research and Development (R&D) spending that (doesn’t) go into sustainable energy, as the International Energy Agency have done (see above).
As Dave Elliott of the Open University notes in the Claverton Energy Research Group forum dispatches : “In the IEA countries (that’s most of them) most energy R&D funding has gone to nuclear fission over the years, and to fusion, and countries to do so – about half the UK energy R&D budget goes to fusion. Renewables are the very poor relation.”
Nuclear Fusion ? That’s been 50 years away for the last 50 years. Why are we still spending money on it ? Renewable Energy technologies can be developed in a matter of a few years – and deployed within ten. It’s outrageous that we’re still throwing money at Nuclear Power when we need new electrical generation in the very short term !
Half of the Department of Energy and Climate Change budget is allocated for nuclear waste disposal, which is a huge millstone around the neck and cannot be dislodged – you can’t make the safe permanent sequestration of radioactive waste subject to budget cuts – and it won’t become cheaper with time.
Almost no research and development of Renewable Energy means low levels of deployment – a situation that should be corrected, I think you will agree (although George Monbiot won’t).