Toronto’s Globe & Mail quotes a UN report that includes this observation: “Within a decade or so, North America will almost certainly emerge as the world’s biggest supplier – and exporter – of reasonably cheap energy.”

How can that be? As The New York Times reported last month, it’s because the U.S. is incredibly rich with natural gas and oil shale deposits that can be reached affordably using hydraulic fracturing, the injection of liquids into rock formations thousands of feet below the drinking water table…

Meanwhile in Washington, that tax cut and unemployment benefits extension deal being hammered out by President Obama and congressional Republicans includes continuation of $22 billion of subsidies for ethanol, an alternative fuel that has received billions of tax dollars in subsidies for the past three decades, and which the federal government requires to be blended with regular gasoline across the nation.

Without government subsidies and mandated use, experts say there would be little or no market for ethanol. The same applies to other alternative sources, but the federal government is embarked on a massive campaign of subsidies and mandated use - think Renewable Energy Standards - in an effort to force the economy to abandon use of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas…