Is there any possibility that the US will get so much power from wind, solar, and other renewables that it can realistically anticipate not burning coal? Every year we wait for renewable to offset coal, more people die from coal's impact.
The entire series is a gold mine for people who actually want to talk about energy generation and climate change on an informed basis rather than just making guesses to suit their particular world view.
With that said, one of my favorite futurists, Ramez Naam, who is a big proponent of Wind and Solar (See: http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow... and http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very...) still thinks we should invest in nuclear, as it has an important role to play in regions where renewable resources (Solar/Wind/GeoThermal/HydroElectric etc...) are not available, and as a hedge against storage (which is critical for solar/wind) technology not advancing to where we need it for 100% support of base-load power.
Though he also talks about Storage here: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-...
Nate Lewis is also a great speaker, and he makes such a convincing argument that Solar is the only possible future source of energy. (Nuclear doesn't even come close)
He also shows that putting solar panels on roofs doesn't even come close to what we need to do.
Worth watching every 3-4 months just to get your head around the scale of the problem.