No one is living in a "fairy land", solar & wind are not expected by anyone to be total replacements for other methods of power generation. They will be useful in those places in which they are useful. Why do we keep having to repeat this.
As for tax subsidies of solar and wind, of what industry is that more true than of nuclear? And I am someone who is in favour of nuclear, we should be using it. Why does no one ever calculate the subsidies to Big Oil? Free market arguments don't apply, none of these society-wide technologies would ever be implemented by any corporation or group of corporations. They all require public input and wider research, things that only public bodies would ever undertake. This is a non-argument.
The re-use of discarded panels is a real issue. But so are abandoned oil and gas wells (90,000 of them in Alberta alone) so please let's not pretend this is a new problem. And clear-cutting never bothered anyone who wanted cheap lumber, so far as I can tell.
All technologies have cost and benefits, what else is new?
So most of this argument is, "hey we did it before with this industry, so why not with wind and solar?"
Kind of like China saying, "you guys polluted the world with fossil fuels, now it's our turn!"
Yes, solar will be useful on roofs, but clear cutting land for a very dilute and intermittent form of energy is foolish. Same thing with wind, not to mention regardless of where a wind mill is placed, they will always be a threat to birds.
By the way, yes, without tax subsidies, fossils fuels would have continued to grow in use. Wind and solar are such an expensive form of energy, they would not be here today without both subsidies and rebates. The only reason Nuclear is so expensive right now is the government red tape; literally if any other power source needed to deal with the amount of red tape nuclear does, nothing would ever get built. I would argue if you removed this red tape, nuclear would be a good option for private companies to invest in creating new innovations as well, just like private companies did at the advent of oil, coal and natural gas industry. Also, nothing is yet standardized; most of all nuclear plants are one off designs, which makes them expensive.
It is simply not the case that governments need to fund innovations. I don't know where you came up with this. in late 1800s, the innovations with oil and gas where all privately funded. The government tried to fund air exploration in the 1890s, but the privately funded Wright Brothers beat the government to it. There are plenty of other examples.
Lumber companies are required to replant trees, not to mention it makes business sense to do so. And even if they did not, the land would naturally reforest itself (albeit over a longer period of time). Wind and solar farms remain clear cut lands for the duration of their use. Even if the land was abandoned, the amount of concrete used would make it much harder for natural reforestation to happen since the concrete would need to decay first. No concrete, or other forms of land development, is used during lumber explorations. Although this was not previously true, lumber companies only harvest the old growth trees, which are more spotty and distributed throughout the forest just due to over harvesting in decades past. Young trees are not worth harvesting and left in place, so not everything is destroyed.
On top of this, many wind and solar farms are being built in deserts, which there are fewer of and take significantly longer to return to nature. Contrary to popular belief, deserts are not empty of life, and nearly all desert animals die when being moved to a new habitat, even if it is relocated to a different spot in the same desert.
Last, all energy sources have cost and benifits. But with wind and solar, the cost are a lot more and the benefits are pretty small.
