OPINION/COMMENTARY

Behind the ANWR Scare Tactics

Despite failure of hard-core environmentalist organizations to diminish George W. Bush’s convincing re-election victory, their renewed attacks on the president are clear: to obstruct his second-term environmental agenda. Yet, with sky-rocketing oil prices likely driving gasoline pump prices to new highs, many Americans begin to question the credibility of the extreme green agenda. Consider the current attack on the Bush administration by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is using the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a 19.6-million-acre federal reserve, for its latest membership and fund-raising drive. Even before the U.S. Senate’s recent vote to support the Bush administration’s proposal to allow oil and natural gas production on a small portion of the refuge’s northernmost region, Hollywood icon and council board member Robert Redford signed on to lead the attack. In a mailing, Mr. Redford asserts, “President Bush is now claiming a mandate... to destroy” the Arctic refuge. The actor accuses the president and congressional leaders of turning “America’s greatest sanctuary for arctic wildlife into a vast polluted oil field” for the sake of “oil company profits.”....

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