Carbon emissions in the U.S. have hit a 20-year low due to a
supposedly environmentally unfriendly drilling technique that
has created an abundance of cheap natural gas. The free market,
it seems, does it better than the EPA. Environmentalists find
themselves between shale rock and a hard place after a little
noticed technical report documented how the natural gas boom
caused by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has
actually helped the environment in a major way while also
creating jobs and economic growth. In the report, the U.S.
Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said
that energy-related U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months
of this year fell to about 1992 levels. EIA estimates that full-
year emissions will be the lowest since at least 1995. The
untold story is that this has been achieved by the free market
and private-sector technology, not government mandates. Fracking
is a process involving the high-pressure injection of fluids,
mainly water with a few chemical