In a recent column, Nicholas Kristof told a story of disadvantaged kids in a Brooklyn, N.Y., middle school who were lifted up through an opportunity to learn to play chess. They became champions. Mr. Kristof said, “Just sprinkle opportunity around and dazzling talents turn up.”

Think what would show up if opportunities were poured out, not just “sprinkled around.” For instance, removing overreaching regulations and crushing taxes on the energy producers, processors and transporters of oil, natural gas, coal, pipelines, etc.

Enough natural resources lie beneath our soil to last for hundreds of years and technology exists to produce and use them, which is compatible with the environment. But the opportunity lies untapped and thousands of real jobs, not phony, temporary, taxpayer funded, make-work jobs, but real jobs, lie dormant.

In a letter to President Obama, I asked him to turn our energy experts loose to build the pipeline, fracture the abundant shale deposits and use the clean coal we are sitting on to power our country into a future with abundant opportunity for all. If there is merit in alternative fuels, the private sector will find and develop it — government won’t.