The UK is the Saudi Arabia of wind, and the other countries of Europe laugh at us. We come fifth in terms of installed capacity and seventh in terms of the amount of power we get from it. Germany, Spain, Italy et al don't mock us because we're lagging at something they're making such a success of – we lag at everything – but because we should be winning so effortlessly.

Yet the outlook remains mixed for UK renewables, which is market speak for "screwed"; subsidies have been cut, albeit only by 10% rather than the proposed quarter. It's up for grabs again in a year. The coalition covers the whole spectrum of belief on the environment, from climate change denier to deep green. It is impossible to predict who'll be in the ascendant next year or even next week. All you can say for certain is that this must be the worst system imaginable for the long-term planning of a nation's energy needs: hand the decision over to a group whose only uniting principle is that they want to keep their seats in parliament.

Subsidies command a huge proportion of the wind conversation, despite the fact that the wind industry itself looks forward to a time when it doesn't need them ("what self-respecting business wouldn't?" asked Robert Norris, head of communications at Renewables UK). The anti-windies complain bitterly about subsidies, which came to £0.7bn in 2010, according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. That same year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, oil, gas and coal received £3.6bn, while nuclear, from figures released by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, will cost £2bn in decommissioning between 2012 and 2015.

So we have these other sources that are either depleting or damaging the environment or, let's face it, both, and we plough seven times as much into them as we do this energy that will ultimately be free. It just doesn't make sense, except in the context of a conversation that is totally irrational.

First, it normally takes place on the premise that there is some alternative energy source which doesn't require up-front government spending, which has no need of infrastructure, whose infrastructure where it does exist springs up on its own, and having done so, is invisible.

Second, people try to mould the debate into more familiar shapes. Windies say it's a new kind of class war, between the people for whom the countryside is a place to retire to, and the people who are at the start of their economic lives, and desperately need to make a living from some business other than agriculture.

At the moment, even if the young can find jobs, they can't buy homes, because prices have been forced up by second home owners; the very people to whom a wind turbine or new pylon would be anathema. Wind farms bring prosperity to an area, not just with jobs, but because they plough back an amount of money per megawatt.

Anti-windies say the opposite – that the preservation of the countryside is the truly democratic impulse, and the only people who welcome its desecration by wind turbines are the people who own the land underneath them.

Neither position is easily proven – Ipsos Mori conducted a poll that showed support for windfarms was slightly greater in rural communities (68%) than in urban ones (66%). But not all rural areas are prospective windfarm sites, and when you look at a group for whom the wind-wolf is at the door – Montgomeryshire Against Pylons, for instance – they are plainly not just representing one class.

So it's very hard to adjudicate. But what's easily decided is this: it doesn't matter. This is a fallback argument, an attempt to appeal to old loyalties. It's fair enough – it's very hard to negotiate new terrain and have a fight at the same time – but it's also irrelevant.

Third, the presentation is very binary – you're either pro-wind or you're pro-nuclear; if you favour the first then you think the second is evil and if you favour the second, you think the first is criminally irresponsible. Again, it's understandable, because it confers tribal security, the environmentalist versus the pragmatist. Ultimately – again, irrationally – it becomes a question of left and right. And again, that doesn't help. Why reject a mixed solution?

The problem is a lack of leadership – the government needs to state its aims and then pursue them. If it decides for the sake of political expedience to eschew wind altogether, then at least let it say so, so that we can lodge an objection to the needless waste, and maybe ask (if they're not too busy) what their plans are otherwise.

If they decide to make a go of the carbon-free power pledge by 2030, they need to go at it seriously, and not respond to every sour gust from a backbench MP. At the moment, the debate is directed by local skirmishes, feeding into coalition foot-dragging. This is no way to plan for the future.

Twitter: @zoesqwilliams