President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he may lose the fight to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling. In a press conference, the president said he will push to exploit oil and gas resources elsewhere in the nation if Congress doesn’t sanction drilling in the refuge. Bush also defended his move to rescind a rule approved by former President Clinton to lower the amount of arsenic allowable in drinking water to the same level adopted by the World Heath Organization and European Union. He suggested that the level wasn’t based on sound science. Responding to criticism about his decisions not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and to back out of the Kyoto treaty on climate change, Bush said, “The idea of placing caps on CO2 does not make economic sense for America.”
