space based solar is far more viable than you give it credit for, with less eyes on profit and more eyes on furthering the human race it is easily attainable, especially now that the advent of commercial space travel is beckoning, the more companies that get involved, the cheaper it shall be to launch such missions! even with the first commercial company doing its first ISS refuel it has already halved the cost of doing so, the more companies that get into this market, the cheaper it will get, and with new emerging technologies such as self assembling mini satellites that cost no more than 500$ each and can be used to assemble larger satellites it is not long before such opportunities will be exploited.
as for microwaves, as long as it is done correctly there shan't be any cock up, beam energy to a specific site with a large reciever and nothing around for a kilometre and you'll have no worries, unless people are stupid and in which case if they die, thats evolution, should pay attention to signs
and it certainly is greed, no company would wish to finance such things right now, when its much cheaper and easier to get into drilling for oil, not to mention its less established than drilling is, and as everyone knows R&D is expensive
and i think your missing the point, im not saying anyone should jump to full solar straight away, by its very nature such a large transition is bound to take time, if you notice i mentioned housing adopting sustainable clean energy first to take the pressure off, keeping oil for cars and for insdustrial purposes! thereby increasing the time that our dwindling reserves will last, but again this wont happen down to greed, what energy company would wish to be undercut and give up business? none of them, and in turn this would effect the economy which the government will dislike, they much prefer being able to tax something a small amount each year than a bigger amount once
also manufacturing techniques are changing, we could right now have millions of flexible, transparent and very low energy crystal clear oled displays, that utilise no heavy metals in their manufacture and can also be printed using a specialised printer (and yes i do know all about this technology as i have done alot of research into it whilst it was an emerging technology to present as a proposal to a multi million pound corporation) but the reason we dont have these? greed. because of its unique properties when the displays and lighting eventually go to the market they will cost thousands for a reasonable size display, to make up for the R&D involved and the fact its so new, despite the fact they could get roll to roll printing presses of the kind newspapers are printed on and churn them out like they are just paper
but so much volume would devalue the technology and eat into company profits
all in all theres alot more to the ideas i express than what i type, and they are more feasible than people give them credit.