Energy Plan Round-Up

As you might imagine, the Sustainable and political blogospheres are abuzz over Dubya's speech on energy policy yesterday. While watching CNN for a few minutes yesterday, I hear Lou Dobbs call it "bold." I actually kind of like Lou, but "bold?" Fortunately, Lou seems to be unique in his characterization:

• Ezra Klein has a much more accurate characterization: "kinda lame." Even if you support such subsidies for polluting sources, this is hardly earth-shattering stuff. Ezra notes:

  There's nothing in Bush's speech about conservation, nothing about a major initiative to fund R&D, nothing about the need for Americans to try and cut their usage of gasoline, nothing, in fact, that'll have any long-term impact on the situation. What we have is a politician offering a pro forma response to a high gasoline prices, nothing more. There's no vision, long-term planning, or even new ideas in this proposal, and so it contains nothing to get excited over.

• Mike Millikin at Green Car Congress points out several of the inherent conflicts in the Bush plan. He also notes that, despite these problems, Republicans in Congress just think it's swell...

Of course, all of this is a side-show: the real action is still going on in Congress as the House and Senate try to reconcile the budget (which includes drilling in ANWR), and the energy bill.

Update: Just wondering: did Dubya use the word "recycling" in discussing his use of old military bases for oil refineries and nuclear power plants? I'd expect as much from a guy who describes nuclear power as "renewable."

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