What

Natural resources are meant to be used; in fact, every generation has left future generations with more resources than existed when that generation arrived on the planet. Today we have more coal, minerals, and oil and gas, for example, than were predicted would exist a few short years ago. Months ago, many predicted peakoil and a future of declining supplies.

But today we celebrate the discovery of a vast deposit of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and a huge natural gas find in Pennsylvania and New York. Given what we have accomplished in the natural resources field in past decades, who knows what the future holds. In the meantime, we must use what has been provided for us.

As the business columnist Warren Brookes once remarked,