Their Energy Policy–And Ours

Despite last year’s run-up in gasoline prices, the energy outlook for the United States appears positive. Adjusted for inflation, gas prices remain near their historic lows, supplies seem adequate, and while some commentators point to growing demand in India and China as evidence that the price of crude is heading up- ward, other developments, notably the United Nations’ push to allow Iraq to resume limited oil sales, suggest the opposite. Indeed, after spurting as much as 40 percent last year, crude oil prices reversed direction in January and, by early March, had fallen back by 20 percent. Equally significant, the peculiar psychology of the seventies seems to have been broken for good. Although total geological oil resource...