Recent headlines provoked by two positive but modest developments — a slight early-summer decline in gasoline prices and a laudable increase in domestic oil production — have trumpeted that these developments mean we are on the verge of achieving “energy independence.” Whoa. Oil monopolizes about 95 percent of the world’s transportation, and OPEC — eight nations in the Middle East and four others — controls nearly 80 percent of the world’s conventional oil reserves. We cannot change anything fundamental if we continue to permit oil and OPEC, a monopoly with a cartel nested inside it, to maintain their dominance of...
