Bush to Sign Energy Bill Today

President Bush will sign the new energy bill today.  The good news is that a multibillion dollar tax on energy companies — which would’ve quickly trickled down the pipeline into a price-hike for consumers — was dropped, as were alternative energy mandates.

The bad news is that the bill still contains dangerous, quite possibly deadly, changes in federal CAFE standards, which mandate fuel efficiency.  These requirements will no doubt be expensive — as the New York Times puts it, the "full costs will not be known for years." And CAFE standards, billed as a tool to fight global warming, are hardly an effective policy. Even liberals at the environmental magazine Grist have warned that it’s a policy fraught with complications and the potential for unintended consequences.

Here, in other words, is a policy that’s expensive, ineffective, and potentially quite dangerous. But it gets passed anyway because, for some reason, it’s considered "politically feasible."