[ceejayoz]

Discovery of oil in the United States: 1859.

Discovery of oil in Norway: 1969.

Imagine if we'd have had the foresight to take Norway's approach that natural resources are the nation's natural resources and let the returns build for 160 years.

[chrisco255]

We used ours to build an automobile-based economy. We didn't exactly lose out on the deal. The unfortunate discovery that CO2 contributes to global warming came much, much later. But at any rate, American economic dominance largely depends on infrastructure and mass market autos.