Which parts of the world are leading the way on energy production and global-warming policy? Clearly the United States. Through technological innovation and private-sector investment, the US is threatening the energy dominance of OPEC and Russia, with all the associated positive geo-political implications. Along with the increased production comes job and economic growth; the oil and natural gas industry is responsible for one out of every five new private-sector jobs and contributes $1.1 trillion to U.S. GDP annually We’re also leading on global warming policy. Because of abundant natural gas, the United States has increased natural gas electricity generation which has enabled us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to 1992 levels. No other industrialized countries have come close to meeting Kyoto-style GHG reductions targets, and we did it through thousands of market decisions, not top-down federal government fiat That free-market approach has enabled the US to avoid the mistakes of Europe, where misguided “green” energy policies have caused more harm than good by saddling consumers and industry with high energy costs without delivering real environmental benefits. For example, Germany is actually increasing GHG emissions while, as Bjorn Lomborg reports, spending $110 billion for 37 hours of delay in global warming by the end of the century. Clearly that is a bad cost-benefit ratio that is harming German consumers and making its industry considerably less competitive Luckily, America’s adversarial democracy enabled us to avoid making the same mistakes as Europe and other countries by avoiding signing onto the Kyoto treaty and adopting similar big government policies such as cap-and-trade. There are those on this blog who will lament that we’re falling behind other countries by not adopting more government imposed “investment” strategies in green energy. How many more Solyndras do we need before we convince everyone that that type of government policy is also misguided? There are plenty of examples overseas as well. Spain and Germany again come to mind, where taxpayer money has been wasted on non-sustainable subsidies to energy sources that can’t compete in the market, saddling consumers with high-priced energy and taxpayers with debt. We’re lucky that we have a strong democracy with a solid free-market tradition that has enabled us to avoid those same command-and-control policies that continue to fail. Other countries should follow.