Don't always assume you know more about everything than the next guy bub.

For the word "inertia" I originally used, you could also use "years of doing things one way, having the infrastructure to support your way of doing things, not wanting to mix the 2 different modes and not wanting to put the money in the capital outlays required". Hope that's less insulting for you.

Can you point to where Hansen said it was cost-effective? I thought his point was more about it being less wasteful.

"In fact, the most effective use of photovoltaic power is on-site." Well yes, but then the most efficient use of any power is very close to its source.
But if the source is not always near the consumer, say if you want to transmit your solar power from sunny Turkey to cloudy Poland, or your wind power from the Scottish Highlands to Glasgow, or the Sierra Nevada to LA.