Something is terribly wrong when Sens. Snowe and Collins, who both previously supported protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling, back down and vote to support a recently approved federal budget that allows ANWR drilling.

When the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a distant memory, reduced to photographs in books we display on coffee tables, how will we justify our decision years earlier to ravage its landscape with oil riggings?

I worry about where these decisions will lead us.

How will we explain that we could have spent money developing and supporting the purchase of alternative fuels, fuel-efficient vehicles, solar power and clean electricity, but we didn’t because we cared more about automobile manufacturing than about breathing?

Piggybacking spending packages onto each other, compromising with bargained votes and quick fixes are a risky way of conducting business. Arctic drilling is a quick fix to one of many energy problems and comes with a devastating cost to the land and wildlife.

Snowe, Collins and other congressional leaders must seek better long-term solutions to our nation’s problems.

Karen Caouette, communications director, Maine Council of Churches, Portland