[IfOnlyYouKnew]

I tend to agree with your point about coal, but fail to see what you're trying to say.

Maybe the non-taxation of fossil fuels' externalities is akin to subsidies. Then that becomes the reason why solar power needed subsidies, but it doesn't change the fact of their existence.

I also doubt raising prices for fossil fuels would have had the same effect on research into alternatives. Solar power is now cheaper than coal, even at the low costs of coal you decry. Given enough time, solar power research will yield tremendous returns, and would have done so under any imaginable tax/subsidy regime for coal and/or solar power.

But markets aren't always capable of reaping such rewards. Not because they are evil, but there was a lot of uncertainty and extremely long timelines involved that those institutions just aren't set up for.

Politics, however, are. And it worked. Score one for that dirty concept.