Imagine what the world would look like today if US fracking technology and America’s wildcat drillers had not delivered the shale revolution.

The liberal democracies would have their backs to the wall.

All those books about the death of the West would be all too credible, including the latest bestseller in France, La Défaite de l’Occident by Emmanuel Todd, a modern outing of Oswald Spengler’s dark classic in the 1920s.

A vertical oil drilling rig in Midland, Texas: America has gone from energy-import basket........

© The Sydney Morning Herald