Editorial: A troubling steward of our lands

Friday, Feb. 2, 2001 | 10:16 a.m.

It was something of a surprise when George W. Bush nominated Gale Norton to be his secretary of the interior. After all, Bush's narrow victory -- and his pledge to be a "uniter, not a divider" -- was expected to result in Cabinet nominees who did not hold extreme views. His selection of Norton and John Ashcroft as attorney general, then, certainly defied the conventional wisdom.

Yet Norton this week won Senate confirmation, in part, by softening many of her previously strident, out-of-touch stands that almost always sided with business interests -- grazing, logging and mining -- on environmental issues. Norton once had even said that the Endangered Species Act and the Surface Mining Act were unconstitutional. But in an about-face, during her confirmation hearings before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, she said she no longer held those views. Norton also said she would enforce all environmental laws, assuring the committee that the top priority of the Department of Interior "must be to conserve those natural resources."

Not only did senators buy her line about championing the environment, many also glossed over her observation that oil and gas exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could be accomplished with little threat to the environment. Such a policy would be a reversal of her predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, who successfully fended off efforts to drill in this environmentally sensitive land. This was the real Gale Norton, a protege of Jim Watt, who was no friend of the environment as secretary of interior under President Ronald Reagan.

It should be acknowledged that Norton's views on drilling in Alaska mimic those of both the president, a former oil company executive, and the vice president, Dick Cheney, another oil man. Both Bush and Cheney have even suggested that the energy crisis in California should serve as a wakeup call to tap the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Despite the administration's hard sell, which ignores the fact that drilling on that public land in Alaska will have no impact on alleviating California's woes, it is heartening that the American public so far hasn't fallen for this pitch. An Associated Press poll released Thursday found that 53 percent oppose the plan, while just 33 percent support drilling there. If such an anti-environmental plan is being advocated in this administration's opening days, when the president presumably is trying to build a coalition by wi nning over those Americans who didn't vote for him, it's terrifying to think what the next four years will bring.