How did light bulbs ever become cheap enough to use without anyone using them? It's called research and development. Throwing out subsidies for specific technologies helps those technologies develop faster, but doesn't necessarily help the best technologies succeed. President Grant might have funded better technologies for getting more whale oil.
Just putting in a cap and trade system makes carbon neutral power generation much more attractive. But it doesn't pick the winners, and maybe some technology you and I are skeptical of turns out to be far better than the others.
> How did light bulbs ever become cheap enough to use without anyone using them?
They didn't, which is why adoption was gradual.
Had there been a concern for a major global environmental catastrophe which more rapid adoption of electric lighting would help stave off, public subsidies to encourage adoption and accelerate development might have made sense.
