SOUND OF A TREE FALLING.(the serious environmental threat posed by the Bush administration)

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, often described as the last truly unspoiled place in America, was created in its current form on December 2, 1980, in the closing days of the Carter Administration. At that time, part of the nineteen-million-acre refuge was designated wilderness, meaning that no oil drilling was allowed there; however, one and a half million acres along the Beaufort Sea were left in a vexed sort of limbo, neither accessible to the energy industry nor permanently off-limits. The battle over this strip of land, a spectacular coastal plain that is home to polar bears, musk oxen, caribou, grizzly bears, and some hundred and thirty-five species of birds, began almost immediately, and has been generating letter-writing campaigns and petition drives, not to mention huge lobbying fees, ever since. In the late nineteen-eighties, President Reagan pressed lawmakers to open up ANWR to oil exploration (the acronym is pronounced "anwar," as in Sadat), but Congress resisted. Then, in the mid-nineties, the equation was reversed, with Congress approving the measure, and President Clinton vetoing it. As soon as President Bush took office, he renewed the call for drilling in ANWR, and only the Senate Democrats have prevented the leases from being put out for bid, by rejecting the proposal first in committee, then as an amendment on the floor, and finally, just a few weeks ago, when it surfaced again, in a conference committee. Although last Tuesday's election results don't in themselves represent an end to the wrangling, that end now appears to be rapidly approaching.

Determining what an election was about is always difficult, and especially so this year, in the absence of exit polls and the voter-survey data they provide. It seems safe to say, though, that one thing the election was not about, at least in terms of deciding its outcome, was the environment. But perhaps it should have been.

During the past two years, the Bush Administration, with remarkable single-mindedness, has set about undoing more than thirty years of work to protect the nation's air, water, and shrinking wilderness. Highlights of the Administration's record, which read like a "Wish you were here" card to regulated industries, include: encouraging road-building through wildlife habitats, pushing tax cuts for energy exploration on public land, rejecting the Kyoto treaty on global warming, and devising new rules that allow mining companies to fill in valleys and streams with waste. In recent months, the Administration's anti-regulatory efforts have grown even more ambitious. Over the summer, the President unveiled his Healthy Forests Initiative, which, in spite of its cheery, public-spirited name, represents an attempt to open up more national forestland to the timber industry. Just a few weeks ago, the ...