Could we harness energy from the atmosphere?

It might sound crazy it might even sound down right against physics and possibility but it just very well may be possible!

This current, of course, is “positive”—it carries plus charges to the earth. So we have a voltage supply of 400,000400,000 volts with a current of 18001800 amperes—a power of 700700 megawatts!
source: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_09.html

So why is it so hard to believe that we could harness even a fraction of that to power our world? 700k MEGAWATTS of power exist just above your head ready for you to capture and use.

Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment was one of the earliest to capture the realization that electrical charge can be harnessed from the difference in potential between the earth and the atmosphere. WHY has it taken us over 300 years to even consider this as a possibility?

Here’s how the experiment worked: Franklin constructed a simple kite and attached a wire to the top of it to act as a lightning rod. To the bottom of the kite he attached a hemp string, and to that he attached a silk string. Why both? The hemp, wetted by the rain, would conduct an electrical charge quickly. The silk string, kept dry as it was held by Franklin in the doorway of a shed, wouldn’t.
The last piece of the puzzle was the metal key. Franklin attached it to the hemp string, and with his son’s help, got the kite aloft. Then they waited. Just as he was beginning to despair, Priestley wrote, Franklin noticed loose threads of the hemp string standing erect, “just as if they had been suspended on a common conductor.”
Franklin moved his finger near the key, and as the negative charges in the metal piece were attracted to the positive charges in his hand, he felt a spark.
https://www.fi.edu/benjamin-franklin/kite-key-experiment

Why is it that over 300 years ago we realized the energy required to power our world was in the sky ready for us to access and yet we STILL do nothing to even try while we research crazy things that cost billions and amount to nothing useful in our daily lives?