Alaska has it. But many Americans say drilling there risks one of our last wild places White. The arctic landscape is many shades of white. It is the crisp white of blown snow, the gray-green white of ice on the sea, the silver white of an Arctic fox's fur, the turquoise white in the sky just before sunrise. Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska stood on the Senate floor in January and held up a sheet of white paper.
Nothing is there.
There is the line of a caribou trail, the Brown Bear River, Snowy Owl Mountain. That may be about to change. President George W. Bush, oil-industry leaders and others believe it's time to tap the black pool under the Arctic white. They say drilling for oil in anwr will help reduce high fuel prices and our country's need to buy foreign oil. This week Murkowski is introducing a Senate bill calling for drilling to begin.