"Can someone explain to me why so many European governments have basically refused to look beyond oil, gas, coal, and anything else combustible in favor of wind, solar, geo, hydro?"

Nuclear - a strange confluence between the anti-nuclear movement and the watermelons of european politics.
Gas (Shale) - the watermelons of european politics would rather import brown coal than sully themsleves extracting lower-carbon fracking products.
Wind - it is widely deployed in many viable places, but obviously the baseload problem.
Solar - it is widely used, but we have a population density problem that reduces opportunity compared to the States.
Geo - there aren't that many places where its viable, most of europe's interior and periphery is geologically ancient/dead.
Hydro - again, there aren't that many sites where it is viable, tho companies like Rheenergise are looking to expand this with clever methods.