Saying that some law or principle works in one context, so it can probably work here or that some country did X so we can do it too doesn't really account for m

Saying that some law or principle works in one context, so it can probably work here or that some country did X so we can do it too doesn't really account for many of the nuances. Solar panels aren't equally effective everywhere on Earth and some countries or parts of countries are just in different places on Earth. They're also not equally effective in all kinds of weather and some places just have worse weather. You would need a huge oversupply to be able to reliably redirect energy to areas that are underproducing through long distance high voltage transfer lines, which are not perfectly efficient and lose energy along the way. What if night time comes, as it tends to? What if a huge weather event blankets a lot of the country for a day or a few days? What if a volcano erupts somewhere and darkens the sky for a while? Batteries, you say! Batteries have their limits too, and they were even worse 25 years ago. Solar panels and batteries weren't simply about reducing costs and increasing supply, they were also about performance, how much land you need, where the land would be, managing adverse events, handling dips, efficiencies, creating jobs, projected innovations (where are we relative to where we can be), etc. In another context, if you send food to poor countries that can't produce as much of their own food and the population starts increasing far beyond the resources of the land, you have a country that's even more dependent than it was before and risk terrible famine if a supply chain breaks down. If the government had artificially pushed for the production of massive amounts of solar panels and batteries, it could make too many people dependent on something less reliable. When the government funding dries up for it, much of the demand and jobs can dry up too if the demand isn't naturally coming from the market. You could also make the argument that if we had pushed so hard for crappy solar panels back then, it could have failed and soured interest in it even a few decades later. This could apply in the political sphere or even among the population who have memories of being stuck with crappy panels and all the problems they experienced. So if you really believe in and want solar panels to succeed, being too extreme about it too early can potentially be worse rather than better regardless of these cost principles. The question has to be asked if something is truly effective altruism when assessed across the full cycle and span of the problem. I don't even know the full cycle or span of the problem, these are just outside observations. It's probably even more complicated than this.