 Over the din of beating tom-toms, surrounded by activists wearing antlers and dressed as polar and grizzly bears, Senator Clinton yesterday dismissed high gas prices and the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina as a "diversion," cautioning that proponents of arctic drilling were exploiting recent crises to make their case for a long-term anti-environment agenda.
Mrs. Clinton's remarks were delivered to hundreds of demonstrators amassed on the West Lawn of the Capitol as part of Arctic Refuge Action Day, and her midday speech followed remarks by other congressional Democrats, including Senator Kerry of Massachusetts. The roster of participants included several environmentalists and left-leaning activists, among them the director of the Religious Action Center of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi David Saperstein, and a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Mrs. Clinton told those opposed to drilling to be "absolutely firm in our opposition" to drawing petroleum from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "Some might say, 'Well, senator, we have gas prices going up - don't we need to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?'" Mrs. Clinton said. "And of course the answer is that we do not. The answer is that that is a diversion. The answer is that we need to break our addiction to foreign oil."
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As gasoline prices remained at more than $3 a gallon yesterday, and as Hurricane Rita further threatened domestic oil production along the Gulf Coast, Mrs. Clinton cautioned against conflating recent decreases in domestic supply with the need to tap ANWR's resources. "You know very well that those who have supported drilling for years are using the increase in oil and gas prices to make their case today," she said. "Here's what I think," Mrs. Clinton said. "It makes no sense to respond to a disaster in the gulf by making a disaster in Alaska."
The senator, whose remarks were greeted with cheering and applause, also excoriated the chairman of the Senate's environment committee, Senator Inhofe, a Republican of Oklahoma, for introducing legislation last week that would allow the Environmental Protection Agency to ease environmental laws to facilitate the post-Katrina rebuilding effort. "We want to help people in the Gulf Coast recover quickly," Mrs. Clinton said, "but not at the expense of their health and the long-term health of their environment."
Mrs. Clinton's remarks yesterday echoed sentiments expressed by many environmental advocacy groups, which in recent weeks have expressed concern that Hurricane Katrina and skyrocketing oil prices would serve as justification for tapping into the arctic preserve to boost domestic oil supply. A proposal to use ANWR's resources had been slated for consideration next month by both houses of Congress as part of a budget reconciliation bill, which would have bridged $2.6 billion of a $35 billion budget gap by leasing land in the arctic refuge to oil companies. Owing to the massive federal expenditures anticipated as part of the post-Katrina rebuilding effort, however, the budget-reconciliation legislation, including the proposals for opening ANWR to petroleum excavation, was postponed until the end of October, Ms. Harper said.
Despite the temporary reprieve for ANWR, Mrs. Clinton urged maintained vigilance. "I believe that our continuing opposition sends a clear message that we will not be diverted from the primary goal of weaning us from this addiction to foreign oil," she said yesterday, noting that drilling in the arctic "would not have any material impact on either oil prices or U.S. oil imports."
Bemoaning the fate of the porcupine caribou resident in ANWR, New York's junior senator said the solution to "$65-a-barrel oil" was not increasing domestic petroleum output but instead devising alternative fuels. "The answer to our energy challenge does not lie under the plains of the arctic refuge," she said, "but in the minds that are ingenious in America." "We could work our way out of this," Mrs. Clinton added, "if the people in power today would get out of the way and quit looking to the past and start looking to the future."
Yesterday, Angela Harper, a spokeswoman for the chairman of the Senate's Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Senator Domenici, a Republican of New Mexico, disputed that drilling in ANWR would harm any indigenous wildlife. "Drilling technology and environmental procedures are now so safe," she said, adding that increasing oil prices showed now more than ever the need to diversify America's domestic oil supply, 30% of which, she said, comes from the Gulf Coast.
Mrs. Clinton concluded her remarks yesterday by saying, "We are better than this," and lamenting the "disgraceful treatment of the people left behind in the Gulf Coast." While departing the event, she was asked to "endorse" a sign held by a demonstrator blaming President Bush for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Iraq war, and the devastation wrought by Katrina. Mrs. Clinton autographed the poster. 
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