Setback for energy foes.(CORRECTION, PLEASE!)(Correction Notice)

ITEM: After the Senate voted to permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), London's Guardian for March 18 reported: "Alaska's wilderness is a place of frozen tundra, calving caribou, wolves, polar bears, millions of migrating birds and stunning natural beauty. But that has not prevented the US Senate from preparing to open it up for oil and gas exploration that environmentalists warn will have disastrous results. Wednesday's 51-49 vote ... ended a long struggle with big oil companies and has fuelled concerns that other unspoilt corners of America will be blighted by drilling rigs, pipelines and the ugly infrastructure that goes with them. It was, protested John Kerry, 'a Republican sneak attack on one of our most treasured natural wonders.'"

CORRECTION: Far from destroying a pristine paradise, as many development foes claim, drilling is slated to affect a mere 2,000 acres of barren tundra within a 19-million-acre reservation in the icy outback of the mammoth state of Alaska. As one columnist wryly pointed out several years ago, this footprint of potential development is about 50 times smaller than the Montana ranch owned by left-wing activist Ted Turner, who has been prominent among those demanding that ANWR remained untouched.

The scare stories rolled out about caribou calamities and the like are reprises of tales earlier used by opponents to delay production in Alaska's Prudhoe ...