There are places that do. Here in Canada there are at least two provinces that subsist almost entirely off of hydro, and have for the better part of a century.

There are places that do. Here in Canada there are at least two provinces that subsist almost entirely off of hydro, and have for the better part of a century. Both export huge amounts of electricity to the USA. And we have active political conflict between big oil and everyone else, where there seems to be an insatiable demand for socializing the externalities of oil and gas while receiving public funding to make oil production competitive and market viable. In that manner, it places itself in front of efforts to use literally anything else. If oil and gas had never received a single dollar of public funding, including by way of public funding for externalities that support or recover from oil and gas, then it never would have been market viable as an energy source in places where it doesn't seep out of the soil. Roads would not have been paved, power plants would not have been built, suburbs would only exist for the very wealthy.