Recall that the mantra of “reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy,” upon careful scrutiny, tends to mask a very different agenda: the word “foreign” here is pure marketing, and what green activists really want is to reduce our supply of energy, period. Recall, too, how the anti-energy types use other soothing, poll-tested phrases like “innovation” and “when you let Americans compete. . . . ” It turns out that they use those with equal sincerity.

Any day now, we expect to see another grab at the throat of our domestic energy supply — to be buried in Waxman-Markey’s addition of further price restrictions on the demand side. These stalwart friends of energy innovation are specifically coming after something called “hydraulic fracturing” — yet another clever approach that would allow us to extract much more energy now lying underneath American soil. The process involves pumping water, sand, and some viscous material maybe two miles down a well to create tiny fissures in the rock bed, allowing previously trapped natural gas to flow to the surface. Jobs are created, energy prices ease — all of that here, in the good ole U. S. of A. — as opposed to providing more jobs for (and more power to) Russia, Iran, Libya, and others who continue to be enriched by our backward energy policies.

For faux-fans of domestic energy innovation, hydraulic fracturing is the latest menace that must be contained — for the same reason that previous breakthroughs have been demonized and restricted: we could get an enormous amount of energy by using it!

A U.S. Geological Survey report in 2002 suggested that the four states of the Marcellus Shale region (PA, NY, OH, WV) could be sitting atop as much as 1.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. People took notice. But those trillions were scattered across an area of 50,000 sq. miles — still a lot of gas in absolute terms, but spread over an area the size of Greece, and about as practically. Alas, maybe we’d better wait for new technology, or a new application of existing technology.

Which didn’t take long. Last year brought a new assessment by another set of pointy-heads, and with drastically different findings. It turns out the actual resource base of the Marcellus is closer to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas than to 1.9 trillion. A lot closer. And thanks to new advances in drilling technology pioneered on the plains of Texas and Oklahoma, 50 trillion cubic feet of it could be extracted almost immediately. A trillion dollars’ worth of American natural gas for the market . . . or continued undue influence granted to Russia, Iran, Libya. . . . Tough call.

If coal’s emissions — as opposed to the energy potential of its vast reserves — were really the issue for greens, surely they would support hydraulic fracturing, right? Applying this technology would, in the emission reductions or avoidances it would engender, achieve the ostensible goal of the cap-and-trade rationing scheme — to the extent that the gas produced would replace coal or coal-fired power. So greens are big fans, right?

Silly rabbit. No.

Instead, next week, Rep. Diana DeGette (D., Colo.) is expected to slip a 97-word amendment into what was a 670-page cap-and-trade bill (that has since ballooned to 1,000 pages, reportedly — because, as James Hansen notes, it takes a lot of pages to buy votes for such an odious enterprise). This gem would give the EPA the regulatory reins over hydraulic fracturing — which, if you’ve ever had to deal with them, and if you’ve read the newspapers lately, is code for stopping it.

Never mind that fracturing techniques have been regulated and managed just fine by the states for decades, thank you very much. Never mind that it might soon come to pass that the EPA will be tasked with regulating the entire carbon-based economy. So what? “EPA — whaddya want?!” “More!” “When do you want it?!” “NOW!!”

This foolish mistake, while consistent with our unhappy history of choking off domestic energy supplies when they become too bountiful, is sure to get lost in the homages to Waxman-Markey during the forthcoming congressional discussion over that rationing scheme, which no one actually believes will make it through the Senate. But without a furor similar to the one that will greet the Obama Energy Tax, the congressional crib-strangling of expanded opportunities for hydraulic fracturing — and perhaps other follies, such as an LCFS (a“low-carbon fuel standard,” aimed at keeping abundant Canadian oil sands from seeping into our fuel supply — a.k.a., the Less Competition For Saudis provision) — may just slip through. And we’ll all be the poorer for it.

Still, in a complete surprise and an abandonment of long-running practice, industry appears to have anticipated and prepared for this assault. I see that a group of independents has launched a project aimed at educating those members who are poised to pretend that they have read the 1,000-page Obama Energy Tax bill that they will begin praising next week. Maybe there’s time.

The greens are betting there isn’t.

We’ll have to wait and see.