America’s Approach to Energy Security Is Broken

For the past few decades, whenever a geopolitical crisis or market tumult has led to higher oil prices, policy makers in the United States have generally followed the same playbook.

First, they try to get more oil on the market as soon as they can. That almost invariably has meant asking Saudi Arabia, which geology has blessed with the world’s most agile oil reserves and which the U.S. has blessed with several billion dollars in weapons, to pump and sell more petroleum.

Then, they invest in America’s “energy independence,” a hazy but ubiquitous slogan meaning that the U.S. should produce as much oil and natural gas as it consumes.

Finally, they recognize that the American economy cannot be truly stable so long as it rests on a single flammable commodity. So in the long term, they say, the U.S. must invest in energy efficiency and fuel conservation, and it must fund R&D so that solar, wind, nuclear, and