The drive for NG is largely based on the idea that it is easy to swap from coal/nuclear to natgas. That drives expansion of demand.
The more effective strategy is to press even harder for wind, geothermal, solar, and wave/current/tidal deployment. That relegates natural gas to a diminishing roll of shaping load around the profile of the renewable mix.
There are enough dispatchable alternatives in the renewable grab-bag to replace all fossil and nuclear.
We also need a far better accounting of the full life-cycle emissions of not only natural gas, but nuclear; and we need it yesterday. This isn't the time for screwing around with bad data.
http://www.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/final-mod-energy-review-2009-SF_revised2.pdfhttp://www.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/final-see-2009-data-trimming-climate-nuclear-fulltext.pdf