It's so bizarre to think that harvesting free energy from the sun could be considered a political or status position. Is it not logically obvious that harvesting as much free energy as possible is the strategically stronger position? Why would you not want to do that?

It's effectively spelled out in the article. The wealth of the last century has been fueled in large part by fossil fuels and it takes an embarrassingly small fraction of that wealth to convince the populace that the competition (I.e. renewables) is a status symbol.