Esoteric Knowledge

You may have heard that a major climate bill -- the "American Power Act," sponsored by John Kerry and Joe Lieberman -- is trundling through Congress. Its prospects for passage are highly unclear; it's a giant mess of a bill, which would have important consequences for any number of sectors in the economy, and the country's attention is largely focused elsewhere at the moment. (A substantial fraction is focused on Justin Bieber, but I don't really blame him.) So what does the bill say? Here's the very short version, from our sister blog 80 Beats: