The mainstream American media follows the traditional mantra of if you repeat a lie or a deception often enough, the public will buy it. Unfortunately, this is a particular shame when it comes to something as fundamental as the forms of energy utilized in Americathat have a direct and material effect upon our quality of life, for without consistent and reliable energy, the America that we know of, would simply not exist. To put it in practical terms, most everyone has experienced an electrical "blackout" for at least some period of time, to which unless one is so foresighted as to have an alternate generator, no electricity is generated whatsoever in the dwelling that you are inhabiting, which means that you now have no lights, no power, no cell phone service, no air conditioning, and no heat. So too, many people have suffered through oil shortages to which gasoline which is normally plentiful in its availability is basically unavailable because of a natural disaster, transportation disaster, or similar, so for a period of time, you are without gasoline, and no matter how fine your car is, if it runs on gasoline, it will no longer be an option for transportation.
The semantics as noted above, signals basically to the common man that a "non-renewable" energy source sounds like a really good thing, since implied within that name is both that it's more natural, since it's renewable, and that its availability appears to be robust. On the other hand, "non-renewable" sounds like something that we shouldn't be using at all, since it can't be replenished, so that hardly seems fair to future generations, that we are permitted to selfishly to use it all up. The thing is though, these terms are incorrectly applied, that is to say, solar and wind are considered to be renewable; whereas oil is considered to be a fossil fuel and non-renewable and those classifications are unfair.
While it is true that the sun shines 24/7 and the wind blows all of the time, at least somewhere, these elements, in order to be utilized as consistent and reliable energy, have to be first harnessed and further they have to have special non-renewable equipment to properly harness this energy. That is to say, there is very little solar energy generated reliably without installed panels containing numerous photovoltaic cells capturing the sunlight which are in turn tied to a control panel and then to a breaker panel. In regards to wind power, this necessitates several non-renewal wind turbines, with its non-renewable connected transformer, substation, and transmission lines in order for electricity to be generated.
Most people have been told again and again that oil is a fossil fuel -- that is oil originates from many eons ago and represents the fossils of long since dead and decaying plants and animals and hence is therefore non-renewable. The above is considered to be fact, but there are other scientists that dispute this "fact" and have proposed a different theory which is that oil is abiotic, which as defined, means that oil is derived not from biological matter but from non-biological matter, that is primarily a mixture of carbon and hydrogen occurring naturally within the earth's crust, creating what we know as oil.
In actuality, the main reason why the media feels compelled to divide energy sources into so-called non-renewable and renewable categories is the fact that the media is part and parcel of promoting a certain, specific agenda which is attempting to advocate certain specific energy sources over other energy sources so as to enrich certain specific players at the expense of others. As always, follow the money.