Re: Wind energy? "Whoa."
The future of natural gas is already here. The vast majority of new power plants being built use it, and there's a shitload of natural gas in the U.S. Environmentalists don't like natural gas any more than they like anything built by technological civilizations.
I think there is also a future in smaller, decentralized nuclear systems (I'm tracking the technology). There are also futures for solar, wind, and others. Granted, no alternative energy will fill all our needs, but a megawatt produced by a solar, tidal, geothermal, or wind plant is a megawatt we don't have to burn hydrocarbons to get.