re:Triangulation
While I like your book suggestions, and I own two of them, I disagree with your total overall assessment.
First, there is a new generation of Nuclear out there. US Nuclear plants are second generation (Chernobyl was a First Generation Plant, Fukishima was a Second Generation system). The new designs are passive safety based. They are much safer, and may well be smaller. We will see a lot more Nuclear in the overall mix, that will take about a decade to come on line.
Ground based Solar isn't cost comptetitive with existing old Nuclear. Coal is still the least expensive electrical generation method, followed by Hydro, then Nuclear, then oil and gas. That's using present life cycle costing.
Solar also has huge environmental impacts on any large scale deployment scheme, as does Wind power.
Space based Solar is still over 20 years away, even if we were spending real money to develop the infrastructure. (It would cost around $20 Billion a year for 20 years to do it.
One final thought, I would add "Mining the Sky" to your suggested bookshelf.
