yes they did, and it delayed us 40 years, which might prove to be the 40 years that would have made all the difference...

but the truth will out, and people put 2+2 together themselves!

solar power doesn't work, they'd say, and meanwhile it's on the space station, and half the emergency traffic lights have a pv panel perched over them!

even now here in italy, they purport to support alt. energy with 'iniziativi', but the rollout is achingly slow, because of all the glacial molasses bureaucracy, and the shadiness of some of the characters trying to 'get rich quick' on the changes not exactly inspiring trust in the enquiring citizen, brain seriously bent out of shape by having been lied to for decades, but whose ratcheting utility bills are getting his attention...

they pulled the wool but good, but you can only fool all of the people some of the time...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Yesterday I saw an interview with Dr. Zhengrong Shih, CEO of SunTech Power Holdings, a very fast growing manufacturer of solar panels.  (Compare their stock "STP" price to traditional energy companies over the last 3 months.  Here's a chart that does it.  XLE is a traditional energy ETF with Exxon, etc.  AAPL and ISRG are in there to represent traditional hi-tech companies.)

Shih, Chinese but a citizen of Australia where he got his PhD, started his company near Singapore because they were more friendly to helping him start up - Australians just wanted to make money off him while he wants to help the world.

To isolate his company from rising raw silicon prices Shih signed very long term supply contracts.

He works out imaginative financing deals like this: a bank loans the money to buy a bunch of solar panels.  5,000 panels are installed on the roof of HP's office in San Diego.  HP pays back the bank, and the bank pays SunTech. Installation is included in the price.   Apparently the monthly cost to HP is attractive, plus being green.

SunTech currently manufactures 420 megawatts of production capacity per year.  And they don't use expensive industrial machines to assemble the panels - it is done by several thousand people, by hand.