Foreign Policy

U.S. energy independence must be about to happen. The International Energy Agency just devoted its World Energy Outlook 2012 to telling us so. America will become the largest producer of oil and other liquid fuels on Earth by 2020; it will be entirely self-sufficient by 2030; and a net exporter by 2035. Boom. Epic stuff. It would be churlish to deny that U.S. energy growth will provide major economic gains to America — of course it will. Here’s a few hundred pages explaining exactly what they are. But this isn’t going to be a free lunch for America.