All eyes are on Washington D.C. this month as a new Congress convenes and a new President is inaugurated. Honestly, so far this year, I have paid little attention to the Capitol other than enjoying the latest Kucinich video on C-SPAN Junkie. Instead, I am much more intrigued with what is happening at the state level.

Today, I heard about an exciting bill that would provide for gold and silver transactions with the State of Indiana (but more on that in a future post), and that got me browsing through the General Assembly web site to see what else our state representatives and senators have in store for us. A bill that caught my eye was SB 284, regarding the International Energy Conservation Code. What is the International Energy Conservation Code and how could some international institution get to dictate what Indiana does with its energy?

The synopsis of the IECC bill explains that it

Requires the fire and building safety commission to adopt the most recent edition of the International Energy Conservation Code before July 1, 2010. Requires the commission to adopt any subsequent editions of the code not later than 18 months after the effective date of the subsequent edition.

• Effectively conserve energy
• Minimizes increases in construction costs
• Allows the use of new materials, products or methods of construction
• Eliminates preferential treatment for particular industries or types or classes of materials, products or methods of construction.

• Increases the cost of building a house
• Requires extra expenses that may be unnecessary for certain building projects
• Requires one to jump through even more hoops to build a house
• Prohibits the right to fully own property and choose what to do with it

Imported from external blog