The Coming Energy Abundance

As politicians, consumers, and manufacturers fret over the price of oil, there's good news on the energy front: Natural gas production is booming from "huge shale beds found throughout North America," reports The New York Times. The improving technology of underground horizontal drilling and fracturing has opened up trillions of cubic feet of gas that had formerly been thought unobtainable. And natural gas can also be used to run automobiles (after about $2,000 in conversion costs). These and other alternative methods of lowering fuel prices could dramatically reshape not only energy policy but the global economy.