The U.S. House Resources Committee voted 26-17 yesterday to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, but Democrats believe they will be able to win enough votes from Republican moderates to defeat the measure on the House floor. Meanwhile, the full U.S. Senate passed a bill yesterday to ban drilling under the Great Lakes for two years. Vermont Sen. James Jeffords (I), the new head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pledged to try to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants, and he repeated his criticism of President Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on climate change.
