Dig,
Indeed, I agree that government may be the appropriate place for debate on such issues, however, in a capitalist society we repeatedly see debate being swayed in favor of short term financial gain. The financial resources you correctly point out that are required by our "brightest and best" minds, certainly have the power to channel creative thinking toward the goals that may appear to reap the greatest immediate rewards.
I believe that our most daunting challenge is not how to provide enough new energy, but how to overcome the strangling power hold of vying for distribution of that energy.
It is interesting to me to consider how far along we have come with technological advances in IT actually using ever smaller volumes of energy by manipulating DC current instead of AC. And also, as with lighting technology: we are now developing LEDs which are far more efficient with less energy use and waste through heat generation. Site based electricity generation in our buildings promises far greater efficiency than distribution over our transmission and distribution grid. None of these developments, however, offer the benefits of scale to the power brokers.
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