I guess his top argument was “climate change”. If that’s the go to we need to see what effect on climate change this 7T would have if invested elsewhere.
Some of the possibilities have a return on investment. Others don’t. The 7T assumes a positive ROI and while fundamental research is crucial to reversing the damage later, I’m not spilling any secrets that we will need 100 dead ends and 1000 incremental improvements before deployment of the next great tech.