In short, the bill is designed to decrease energy usage and tax consumers, businesses, manufacturers and namely, coal plants to provide revenue to the state and federal governments to develop solar and wind energy unable to produce the amount of energy currently consumed.

After reading numerous articles that describe the contents of the bill, I decided to actually read the bill.

This is what it will do:
Mandate that every household change whatever is necessary to become more energy efficient by introducing economy-wide reduction goals.
            -that means you will need to replace any part of your home that does not meet federal guidelines for energy efficiency, including windows, doors, insulation, washing machines, dryers, furnaces, water heaters and so on.
            -it also means that you will need to lessen your consumption of energy even if you do all those things
            -if you fail to comply with energy efficient standards, your consumption of energy will be rationed.

John Dingell, a  representative from the southeastern corner of Michigan said, "Cap and Trade Is A Tax and It's a Great Big One"

Indeed it is, not only does it increase taxes substantially, it doubles electricity rates not only for your household but for your grocery store, your workplace, and so on.  That means that the cost of your food and will go up, and your job may be threatened.
Another downstate representative wrote, "Cap-and-tax will essentially kick working families when they are down. In 2008, approximately 21 percent of all utility accounts were overdue, with folks carrying past-due balances, on average, of $160 on electric bills and $360 for natural gas."

2.  The bill mandates that the use of fossil fuels (defined as coal, oil and natural gas) be phased out, and the use and development of electric plug in cars be phased in.
            -the bill says that using oil makes us more likely to outbreaks of war, it forces us to use less by increasing prices on gasoline and diesel fuel
            -it wishes to simultaneously conserve home energy and create a whole new electric use--cars

3.  It mandates that each State's fleet of vehicles be in compliance.  Also requires the retrofitting of every government building, every public institution including schools and colleges.
            -meaning that the State of Michigan, already strapped, the State with the worst economy of all 50 as well as the highest in unemployment will have to set up a new bureau to regulate and implement the use of electric vehicles, and has to find money in the budget to change the furnaces, windows, doors, insulation of colleges and schools.

4. Writes into federal law the assertion that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant.

5. Creates an additional branch of the IRS to tax the use of carbon.

6. Creates a cap on industrial emissions beginning in the year 2012 that tightens  every two years thereafter until current emissions are the same as they were in the year 1910.
   

Of course there are massive regulations specifically targeting coal plants.

Coal plants will have to be tested for emissions at the stack mouth, and if found not in compliance, they will need to pay exorbitant sums of money in the form of a penalty tax.  

They will be mandated to decrease their energy output during peak demand, when energy is most needed, like hot summer days and cold winter nights.

They will be mandated to provide carbon sequestration, a pie in the sky idea not even developed yet, pushed heavily by Al Gore, where the carbon emissions are sent under the earth instead of in the air.     According to the EPA itself, "Carbon sequestration has been experimented with for a number of years, and it works in the laboratory, but we're not 100 percent sure how well carbon sequestration works in real life, because it could be many years before we see some of that carbon we think was sequestered escaping back into the atmosphere. So, unless we have studies that cover many decades, we'll never know if the sequestration works. There are various methods that we think work better than others, but until we have long-term studies, we won't know for sure."

The bill requires that a coal plant force carbon dioxide underground while at the same time protects the entire area that the coal plant will be sitting on from being force-fed carbon dioxide.

This bill kills the Wolverine plant in Rogers City.

Representative Bart Stupak not only was proud to vote for this bill, he helped write it.

We need to contact Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, now.