Editorial: Drilling in refuge should be prohibited

Monday, March 17, 2003 | 8:51 a.m.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton, reciting the Bush administration's position, last week trivialized the importance of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge while citing the urgent need to reduce dependence on oil from the Middle East. She said drilling for oil in the ANWR is the path to job creation in Alaska and greater energy security for the country. But even oil industry executives who back drilling in the ANWR say it will take at least 10 years before any meaningful amount can be delivered to the market. Nevertheless, the U.S. Senate, prodded by the Bush administration, is once again nearing a vote that would permit drilling within a 1.5-million-acre section of the refuge. The Senate voted 54-46 last year to ban drilling. But the November elections, which gave Republicans a one-vote majority in the Senate and greater control of the House, gave new life to this ill-advised proposal.

The nation's wildlife refuge system celebrated its 100th birthday on Friday. We would like to think that many of the senators read a few articles about the founding of the system by President Theodore Roosevelt. The refuges were created to safeguard particularly beautiful ecological wonders from the everyday environmental dangers of the industrial age. Norton says she sees the ANWR as "an area of flat, white nothingness," but she is obviously blind to the real value of this open space that is home to polar bears, grizzly bears, wolves, muskoxen, arctic foxes and a hundred other species of wildlife.

A better alternative is for Congress to pass stricter fuel economy standards for all new cars sold in the United States. This could begin immediately and would save more oil than could ever be extracted from the ANWR.