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I disagree. I think it IS due to ideology using "pragmatism" as a disguise. We KNOW that it's going to get worse, which means that if we wait, we're going to be spending to cope with climate change at the same time as we're spending to change our infrastructure.
We have money to spend, we're just spending it badly right now. One example is the colossal amount we spend on our military.
As to Japan, the problems with nuclear are the SAME as the problems with fossil fuels, because coal plants AND nuke plants need to be cooled. The LFTR reactors that China is working on don't require the same kind of cooling system, and so don't need to be built near water.
As to wind power, the number of birds killed is a tiny fraction of the number wiped out every year by building windows alone, and the pollution emitted by fossil fuels tends to kill more birds than the few thousand killed by wind turbines. Basically, it's an overblown problem.
On the same level, the "noise" thing is a non-issue. The ONLY areas where wind turbine "noise" is a problem, are areas where there have been PR campaigns telling people how bad the noise is. It's a placebo effect.
There are problems with ALL power sources, but the ones associated with renewable energy sources are smaller, and easier to manage, and we're making VERY rapid advances. Combining technologies can get us much farther along than we are now.
Take Germany - they get LESS sun almost all of the U.S., and they've got one of the strongest economies in the world, while also having one of the highest renewable energy portfolios in the world.
Even if we can't make a 100% conversion there is ZERO practical barrier to doing more than we are doing now. The only barriers are ideology (the GOP's official party platform is that everything's fine), and established business interests trying to block changes that would cut into their profit margin.
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