From the fossil fuel industry’s perspective, the problem with solar isn’t that it’s different from oil and coal. Big Carbon isn’t shy about capex – they’re always blowing millions on cool, eye-wateringly expensive new gadgets for sucking old dead things out of the land and sea.

The problem is that the sun shines everywhere. The fossil fuel industry is many things – ardent génocidaires bent on the extinction of the human race for profit – but what they are above everything else is rent-seekers.

The whole point of an extraction economy is to control a key factor of production so that other people need to come to you in order to do everything else. The ideal oil economy consists of a series of holes in the ground surrounded by people with guns, owned by a cartel that chokes off supply to maximize profits while leaving a highly visible share of the world’s population shivering in the dark as a warning to anyone complaining about their prices.

Fossil fuels are valuable because they are a chokepoint on the entire productive economy. Anyone who’s seen the Mad Max documentaries knows how this goes: even the most mid, paunchy, straw-haired boomer with volcanic acne and shitty dress-sense can seize power over the whole population if he controls the supply of one of life’s essentials.

The fossil fuel industry is a magnet for people who love a chokepoint. These people are born tollboth operators and they never stop hunting for turnpikes.