Columnist Susan Snyder: In politics, we all know the drill

Friday, March 18, 2005 | 3:55 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

March 19 - 20, 2005

Nearly 102 years after President Theodore Roosevelt signed the first national wildlife refuge into existence, the U.S. Senate voted to open our most vast and unspoiled one to oil drilling.

Roosevelt created the foundation for national wildlife refuges on March 14, 1903, when he withdrew Florida's Pelican Island as the first national bird reservation. Roosevelt created 53 refuges for wildlife during his tenure, 34 of which remain in existence.

When the Senate voted Wednesday in favor of President Bush's plan to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I was all set to rant about those politicians back East who once again considered an open swath of the West a wasteland ripe for exploitation.

It's pretty apparent they consider Yucca Mountain a useless void. And Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has discovered that, despite promises made, folks pushing for a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in his state think the same of Utah's west desert.

But it's not "those people" who think so little of the West's hidden treasures. Of the 30 senators in 15 Western states, 19 -- including both of Alaska's -- voted in favor of drilling in what might well be the least-tainted chunk of America's wild lands.

Hatch and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., were among them. Two men fighting the storage of nuclear waste in their state's pristine open ranges are ready to drill the daylights out of someone else's.

Recent discovery of scientists' e-mail admissions that the basis for Yucca Mountain was in part fiction has Hatch -- who voted in favor of our dump, but not his -- singing "Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead" with Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Yet, Reid is the only one of this merry trio who connected the dots and voted against including the Alaskan drilling provision in the federal budget.

There isn't enough oil up there to make a dent in the amount we use down here -- even the oil companies have admitted that. And it seems odd to start tearing apart the landscape when most of us haven't made even the tiniest effort to use less of it.

We're buying bigger gas-hogging vehicles every year. Most of us drive to work alone every day. We're driving kids two miles to school instead of teaching them the value of walking and riding bikes.

We're pigs when it comes to oil, and we're making a sty out of the world to get it.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge encompasses 19.6 million acres with 180 species of birds, 45 species of land and marine mammals, 36 species of fish and three rivers.

Caribou, moose and muskox roam free.

Ever seen a muskox outside a zoo?

Me neither. Would like to, though.

More than 90 percent of Alaska's shoreline already is open to drilling. It would seem we could leave the rest alone.

In his 1913 autobiography, Roosevelt says more important than other actions during his tenure "was the taking of steps to preserve from destruction beautiful and wonderful wild creatures whose existence was threatened by greed and wantonness."

A century later his words still inspire.

It's hard to believe that 102 years from now, "We needed the oil" will have the same ring.