Moving beyond ANWR.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Bush has been working with wrinkled-brow intensity for five years to open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. After many failed efforts, it seemed earlier this week that the president's No. 1 energy priority would finally pass in Congress.

Thanks, however, to some gutsy intercession by moderate House Republicans, arctic drilling may once again be thwarted - although supporters can be relied upon to continue their pro-drilling efforts until the last votes are counted.

House GOP leaders dropped the Arctic drilling plan, as well as a plan allowing states to lift a moratorium on offshore drilling, in exchange for desperately needed support by two dozen moderates for a must-pass budget bill designed to cut spending by $50 billion. However, divisions in the party's ranks over the drilling provisions and cuts in domestic spending later forced Republican leaders to postpone a vote until next week.

It's encouraging that moderate Republicans as well as Democrats are opposing the environmentally destructive provisions in the House budget bill, although they could still be restored in conference committee. The Senate version of the bill, which passed last week, included Arctic but not offshore drilling.

Republican leaders have only themselves to blame for their humiliating predicament - and for the obscene horse-trading that resulted in the moderates agreeing to support unconscionable cuts in food stamps and health care for low-income families in exchange for dropping the drilling provisions.

Frustrated by their previous failures to pass Arctic and offshore drilling through the regular budget process, Republican leaders inserted the latest version in a huge appropriations bill that cannot be filibustered. It was a cynical ploy that was aimed at forestalling debate on a vital issue of national energy and environmental policy.

GOP leaders resorted to such tactics because they were aware that the proposal to drill in the Arctic refuge wouldn't stand on its own merits. Not only would it despoil a rare wilderness that provides habitat for an extraordinary array of wildlife, it would do absolutely nothing to lower petroleum prices in the short term - and would do little to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil in the long term.

The refuge's oil would boost global reserves by an estimated 0.3 percent, an increase that would have negligible impacts on U.S. oil imports or energy prices. It would take at least eight years before the first drop of refuge oil reached the pumps.

More importantly, siphoning the refuge's oil now would mean that it wouldn't be available for future generations, when the need could be far greater and when new technologies could enable it to be removed with less damage to the environment.

Both the ANWR provision and the offshore drilling proposal, which would allow states to opt out of a 24-year-old federal moratorium and do serious damage to this nation's coastlines, reflect a one-sided energy policy, one that lacks a comprehensive plan for reducing consumption.

The administration and its supporters in Congress should abandon their obsession with supply-side energy proposals and begin work on what this country really needs - a viable and visionary program of energy conservation and transformation.