I commend what looks like a slight change of direction in your writing, away from hopelessness, towards acceptance that there might just be a solution.
I hope you won’t waste too much more energy thinking about, and encouraging everyone else to think about philosophy, rather than the physical problem.
The problem is that we are not connected to the only actual source of energy, unlike nature, and our economy tricks us into thinking only in terms of stored energy, so we literally can’t see or understand the full benefits of using actual live energy.
This story still seems to fall into the mainstream trap of missing the real gains from using actual live energy, rather than energy from Earth storage, to do all things, including undoing much of the harm of pollution.
I say that because you are in effect using the concept of EROI, where you talk about net gain. I wrote an article recently explaining why mathematically, EROI can’t be applied to solar, which is the only source of actual live energy.

Insisting on only considering economics where EROI can be applied, locks us into the same physical capitalism that we know is at the root of the problem.