There is a (perhaps apocryphal) story of Michael Faraday showing his new invention of an electric motor to a politician in 1821. He had invented it after investigating strange twitching of a magnetic compass needle.

After seeing the motor, the politician asked “what good is it?” and based on what I can find Faraday either said “what use is a newborn baby” or “one day you’ll be able to tax it”.

So two points: One, you don’t always know things will have a high ROI from the start. Sometimes you just have to be curious. And two, politicians care about the next election in two/four years, not planting trees that won’t bear fruit for 30 years.