Ninety-five percent of the Alaskan coast is open for oil exploration. To any reasonable person that would sound like plenty. But not to an oilman.

President Bush, ignoring the mandate by Congress last year to spare the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil rigs, won’t give up. He is making noise about inserting a drilling plan in the federal budget.

It’s a sneaky and decidedly undemocratic ploy to grant his oil cronies access to pristine land.

Drilling in the refuge is not a budget item. It’s a policy decision. As such, it must go through the legislative process, getting a full and fair hearing. We must explore in detail the merits of causing centuries worth of environmental harm to gain what may amount to a mere six months’ supply of oil for our energy-crazed nation.

Government is supposed to do what is best for citizens, not what is best for oil companies. Bush needs a not-so-gentle reminder of this basic fact.

Politics aside, including the potential for dragging the budget process to a standstill on this point, the plan to drill in the re-fuge is wasteful. It will not reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We simply guzzle too much energy.

We must reduce our use, not increase our supply.

Sen. Susan Collins, who was recently elected vice-chairwoman of the Alliance to Save Energy, gets it. She understands that our need, as she puts it, “to develop more efficient ways to use energy has never been more obvious than it is today.”

Greater efficiency is the cheapest, quickest and easiest way to save energy, Collins said.

If American oil is so precious, we should stop selling what we’re hauling out of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay to Japan and ship it to the lower 48 instead.

Congress must reject the Bush administration’s scheme to drill in the refuge. The issue was decided last year. Bouncing it back, tucked in the budget, wrongly manipulates the legislative process governing this nation.
No rolling back
Regulations governing emissions from coal-burning power plants were developed to protect our health. If these New Source Review regulations are rolled back, health is sacrificed.

For what? Profits?

The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is one of protection. But the agency is rolling back protection, sacrificing our health under political pressure.

It must resist.

Perhaps as early as today, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina will propose an amendment to an appropriations bill that may stop the backslide on emission standards the EPA seems intent on making.

The amendment would require an independent study of the health, environmental and pollution impacts of the rollback. Such a study would clearly prove that relaxing standards will harm Americans.

Maine’s senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have been firm on protecting the nation’s Clean Air Act, which protects us.

We urge them to stand up for us again and support the Edwards amendment this week.


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