To put that in perspective, if you earned $1 a second 24/7/365—about $31 million per year—it would take you 158,550 YEARS to make $5 trillion.

$5 trillion is an almost unfathomable amount of money.

However, even with that astronomical financial support, the world still depends on hydrocarbons for 84% of its energy needs—down only 2% since governments started binge spending on renewables 20 years ago.

That's all according to Mark Mills in a report from the Manhattan Institute, who concludes that:

"The lessons of the recent decade make it clear that solar, wind, and battery technologies cannot be surged in times of need, are neither inherently 'clean' nor even independent of hydrocarbons, and are not cheap."

With all that in mind, it should be clear that so-called renewables—more accurately, unreliables—have been a giant flop. They are not viable for baseload power—even with $5 trillion in subsidies and two decades of trying. Today, using wind and solar for mass power generation is an artificial political solution that would not have been chosen on a genuinely free market for energy.

Wind and solar power might be useful in specific situations. Still, it's ridiculous to think they can provide reliable baseload power for an advanced industrial economy. It's like trying to force a square peg into a round hole.