Building a green energy infrastructure will take energy.  That means we need to use the energy sources we have, fossil fuels, to build out the infrastructure we want.  Solar, wind, and in any realistic scenario nuclear.

Making windmills that means burning fossil fuels until we have a green infrastructure which it self will need to be built out using fossil fuels.

Hey don’t take my word for any of this.  I’m just a theoretical astrophysicist.  Truth is none of this hinges on any advanced research grade science.  It takes energy to obtain energy. 

IF you need more convincing of that then answer me this question.  “Can you, a human being,  get the energy to live and gather food to eat if you have never eaten food in the first place?”.  Think about that much more approachable problem and without any formal physics education.  It takes energy to obtain energy. 

 Space Based Solar Power.

In the far, or not so far, future we will ultimately use space based solar power. 

It will take energy to get that going which can be a problem.    Building a Dyson swarm will take the energy of … a partial Dyson Swarm to get it going.  If we really want to solve the problem we should wisely use our resources to build out this space based solar power infrastructure starting NOW.

The simplest most approachable explanation for how this would work is something done well by this video. Don’t let the fact it features cute animated birds fool you this is quite serious. 

TLDR

Making windmills that means burning fossil fuels until we have a green infrastructure which it self will need to be built out using fossil fuels.