I've been harsh on elected officials lately, but I've got to hand it to Bill Ritter for changing his mind on shale oil exploration in his home state of Colorado. It’s tough to make the right call when you’ve got an angry conservative blogger looking over your shoulder.

While high gas prices have increased the economic viability of so-called "oil alternatives", such as shale oil, tar sands and and gassification of coal, they remain a chronically inefficient means of oil production, because crude oil produced from them requires far more energy to extract. This dramatically amplify the carbon footprint of the oil products they produce.

Ritter’s taking some heat for the decision on energy independence grounds, but the US is far from the first country to realize that oil shale simply isn’t a viable solution to the world’s energy problems.