The only problem I would have with that characterization is that governments are not subsidizing the moonshot; they're subsidizing sailboats. You have to ask yourself, why, when the wind was there all along and we had sailboats, did coal and diesel and other fuels come along and displace that energy? The world was not short of windmills in the 19th century. The Egyptians had solar energy 2,000 years ago. Carbon fuels were developed and displaced those energies because they had a number of advantages. They're reliable. You know exactly what you're going to get. You know how much you're going to get. You know when you're going to get it. Unfortunately, governments tend to associate cleaner with renewable, whereas in practice it was never the case.
I share the frustration of your entrepreneur, who would actually create real value and fewer problems than existed before. My beef would be with the notion that the government is going for the moonshot. No, they're going for the sailboat.