If renewables are now so cheap, why do they still need government subsidies and mandates?
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There's a continuum of uses. When there are externalities, markets do not settle on the optimal set of choices (except in corner solutions). Taxes and subsidies allow the "invisible hand" of decentralized business and consumer choices to settle on the optimal mix of uses.
Yes, and what I'm pointing out is that, since even with these taxes and subsidies renewables are overwhelmingly not being chosen by the market, they're a lot worse than they're made out to be.
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Also, the externalities of fossil fuels have been greatly overestimated and those of renewables underestimated, so large subsidies and taxes favoring the latter are bad, but that's a separate point.
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Here are the best estimates of the pollution cost of fossil fuels: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.5.1649 … For coal, the externalities are larger than the entire value added – we’d be better off with zero coal production. As we did with acid rain, lead and cfcs, we can address this.
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1) There are costs to switching to renewables 2) Even accounting for switching costs, renewables are optimal in the long-run, but people do not discount the future appropriately (i.e. hyperbolic discounting is a common behavior).
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1) Which is a reason not to switch. 2) Unproven hypothesis.
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