Like many environmentalists, I was dismayed when the Senate
failed to pass a cap-and-trade bill two years ago. It looked
like we would never get our act together to reduce greenhouse
gases. Get ready to have beachfront property in Vermont, I
thought. But it turns out our greenhouse emissions dropped
anyway, from 6 million metric tons to 5.2 million — the lowest
level since 1992. We even beat the European Union, where the
Green Party actually has members. So how did we do it? One big
reason, ironically, is a Texas oil man named T . Boone Pickens,
who perfected the art of squeezing natural gas out of shale rock
by blasting huge quantities of water at it. People already knew
that America sits on huge reservoirs of natural gas embedded in
shale. But nobody had a cost-effective way to get it out. As
Pickens mastered his technique — known as “fracking” — natural
gas became unbelievably cheap. Everyone started switching away
from sulfur-burping coal plants to gas. People started swooning
about gas: It comes from eco