The people who spend their lives buying and selling oil are making big bets that the price is going up, with a number of analysts predicting the return of $100 per barrel oil within months. This makes a lot of people nervous, for good reason. When oil gets expensive, life tends to get ugly. The long gas lines of the 1970s proved that. So did the price spike in 2008, which had more than a little to do with knocking over the house of cards we all lovingly referred to as the world financial system.

Pretty much the only consistent energy policy we’ve had in the United States, if you can call it that, is the desire