Iain Murray doesn't think much of the energy bill:

It will raise energy prices, raise food prices, increase hunger, worsen appliance performance, make the roads more dangerous and bring back Carter-era gas lines and shortages just when we need them the least - after disasters. It's a horrendous concoction of every bad energy idea imaginable and will impact every family trying to make ends meet around the country. It's unbelievably stupid in its rehashing of failed ideas and do-it-yourself economics. It needs to go down in flames, and soon.

[Update about 2:30 eastern]

There's a request in comments for a link to the bill itself. I'm guessing that it's this one (thank Newt Gingrich for Thomas).

Also, the editors of National Review are pretty unimpressed as well.

[Late afternoon update]

Thomas links seem to have a finite (and short) lifetime. Just go to Thomas, and search for S.1115.

Rand: How about a link to text of the bill so we can discuss it in addition to Iain's comments on it?

I particularly like the: "ASSISTANCE TO STATES TO RECUCE SCHOOL BUS IDLING" (all caps theirs). It seems that Congress wants to micro manage a long list of things that make up maybe a few percent of our energy use. I categorize these as "feel-good tokens" while the big issues such as:

"over 3 million tonnes [annually] of coal for a 1000 MWe plant (cf less than 30 tonnes of fuel for same-sized nuclear plant)." ref www.uic.com.au/news307.htm

A single coal burning power plant that emits 11 million tons of CO2 per year has a bit more environmental effect than reducing the idling of school buses. That's 3 million tons of coal times the molecular weight ratio to get CO2 generated. Compare that to a similar size nuke that uses 30 tons of fuel and generates no CO2.

In my opinion, Congress should be leading the process of building nuclear instead of coal burning power plants. (There are about 30 nukes being built around the world today and only one in the US.)

LOC link no longer works.

It wasn't much of a leap to figure out that general AGW hysteria was going to be an unmitigated disaster for the average person's standard of living. Not to mention a huge boon to controllers, regulators, demagogs and political con men the world over.