Along the same lines, imagine all the alien Voyagers that have already whizzed past Earth and been ignored for trash or a lousy rock.

Hell yeah, let's do it.

Long-term solutions can coexist with short-term remedies.

The idea is to mitigate global warming by moving as much resource collection, refining, manufacturing, and energy production into space, asap. This is not hyper future tech. I speak on this personally, because it was mine and my professor's area of focus in electromagnetics and electrodynamics in 1997. Of course, it takes time, money, and will to implement, which the Chinese are now doing. These first steps are not the final product, but they are necessary to get there, and I'm glad someone is finally doing it. You're right about the fact that we've waited far too long already.

But with the ability to beam power anywhere in the solar system, you don't need to launch from Earth. Everything can be mined, refined, manufactured, and deployed in zero-g or micro-g.

The Earth-based outlay would not be in the form of close solar orbit panels. It would be self-replicating machinery deployed to the asteroid belt. Possibly even deployed from Earth's moon (which admittedly still traces back to initial launches from Earth). But the vast bulk of the grid would not be launched from Earth.

Seems like a great idea to me. The Earth's atmosphere, distance from the sun, rotation, and seasonal tilt dramatically reduce the effectiveness of surface-based solar. All other forms of energy harvested on Earth (fossil fuels, etc.) are just various different inefficient forms of solar power, with significant losses in the efficiency of collection and transmission (e.g., biological and geological processes).

But a panel in close solar orbit can receive a much greater flux with nearly 100% uptime. Energy collected from close solar orbit can be beamed not only back to Earth, but also anywhere in the solar system (Mars, the moon, the asteroid belt). The resources to construct such systems are available in zero-g or micro-g environments (e.g., in the asteroid belt), so we would not have to mine the Earth or overcome Earth's gravity well to manufacture and deploy them. Space-based solar energy collection and transmission can be the backbone of a system-wide energy grid that essentially leaves Earth untouched.