“In the meantime, our total energy consumption represents less than 0.1% of the solar energy that reaches the Earth every day. Why look elsewhere?”
An analogy: The oceans have 4.0*10^20 Kg of gold, much more than what has been extracted from earth since the beginning of civilization: 1.3*10^8 Kg. So why are we not all running to the beach and extract that gold? Because the gold in ocean water is very dilute and all ocean life will be poisoned in the extraction process.
Similarly with diffuse sources of energy such as solar and wind. The large number of solar panels and wind turbines needed will bring about much greater ecological disturbance than nuclear energy. Mining engineering have made great strides and extraction of radioactive elements from low-grade ores will become commercially feasible soon.
