While ASHRAE typically deals with facts, scientific laws, the concrete, the rational, and the logical, my purpose here is to describe current legislative and political efforts to manage appliance energy consumption. The subject, by its very nature, is unlikely to deal with the "concrete, rational, or logical" -- though it certainly will have plenty of "laws", albeit non-scientific. First, I shall try to put the total natural energy consumption situation into perspective. (My source for data is the Stanford Research Institute report, Patterns of Energy Consumption in the United States, November, 1971.)