ANWR hope dealt a setback

Our oil refineries took a beating from devastating hurricanes, and gas prices skyrocketed. Now President Bush is taking a beating from poor poll numbers - and lawmakers are seizing on that fact to limit access to our own country's oil.

The hurricanes seemingly provided momentum for Bush-backed energy measures that would give U.S. oil firms access to more oil. After all, the best way to relieve a shortage is to find a more plentiful supply of the scarce product.

One way to do this would be to drill in the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska - a plan that always has had majority support in Congress, but has failed passage because of filibuster threats inspired by fierce opposition from special-interest environmental groups.

But that problem was supposedly circumvented earlier this year when the GOP leadership wrote ANWR drilling into the budget resolution. Budget bills, unlike energy bills, cannot be filibustered - a majority vote in both houses is all it takes to pass.

The final budget bill was expected to have its toughest sledding in the Senate, but it passed by 51 votes earlier this month. Then, in a stunning development, ANWR was dropped from the House's budget bill even though it had passed easily in the budget resolution.

The difference was that when the resolution was passed, President Bush was riding high after his re-election. Moderates in both political parties didn't dare buck him. Now his poll numbers are in the pits, and House Democratic moderates are standing with their leadership in unanimously opposing the budget bill.

This opened the way for soft GOP moderates - feeling more heat from environmentalists than from their poll-weakened president - to demand the ANWR provision be deleted from the bill, or up to 25 of their number would join the Democrats' opposition. Fourteen GOP defections would be enough to kill the bill. ANWR exploration is still in the Senate bill, so there is a chance it can be restored in House-Senate conference negotiations. Let's hope that happens.

Isn't it time, though, that the impact of super-zealous environmentalism on public policy be looked at with a critical eye? Environmental regulations cost $150 billion annually - a heavy toll on the economy. How much of that is necessary?

Environmental extremists are effective at saying "no" to everybody else's ideas, but they have no positive energy agenda of their own. They're against developing more nuclear power, constructing more oil refineries, offshore oil drilling and ANWR exploration. What would they have us do? Burn kindling wood?