Fossil Fuels

In all the talk about the election and the America economy, one issue seems to be under the radar. We used to worry about being dependent on foreign oil, and about fossil fuel running out -- this has been driving the green movement for years now and is what was behind President Obama's drive to fund green energy alternatives (a drive that has been less than successful - several of the efforts his administration funded have gone bankrupt).

But beneath the radar, a very profound thing has happened.  Technological advances, primarily "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing, has opened up truly vast new fossil energy sources in North America in the form of natural gas. We may quite soon cease to import much oil from anyone.

Opponents of fracking worry about all sorts of things, like contaminating underground aquifers (though most fracking takes place way, way deeper than any aquifers we use)  or causing earthquakes, but in fact the evidence thus far suggests these worries are overblown.  Burning natural gas still has global warming implications, but we know how to address that problem with efficiency improvements, business incentives and some other technological advances, if and when the nation can get its act together and actually implement them.

But this flood of new cheap energy promises to profoundly change the American economy, and change it for the better.  It will no doubt take a few years for the effects to be obvious, but it is truly a "game changer" that hasn't really been talked about much yet.