Liberal Talk Radio

So apparently the energy bill is about to pass. Finally.

This is, of course, the piece of legislation that the President has been trying to get through congress for years. So what to make of this $11B beast? Well, it’s not great. There are lots of “incentives” to help the poor, cash-strapped oil companies develop new fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Happily, however, it seems that there will be no drilling in ANWR. How that happened, I have no idea. I was pretty sure that ANWR drilling had majority support in both houses. But you know what they say about laws and sausages: no one wants to know how they’re made.

In other energy bill news, we can now proudly say we’re less progressive than alternative-energy powerhouse China, since Congress beat back a provision by Sen. Jeff Bingham to require utilities to get at least 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. China should hit that goal and then some. The director of China’s Center for Renewable Energy Development said that for his country, 10 percent is probably “too conservative.”

This is a 10-year bill. When it comes up for renewal in 2015, the global energy landscape will have changed drastically. Until then, though, this is what passes for leadership on energy policy and climate change. Ho-hum.