SAGINAW, Mich. — George W. Bush rolled out his plan to combat soaring energy prices Friday, prompting a sharp clash with Al Gore over Bush's call for oil drilling in an Alaska refuge for polar bears and other wildlife.
Bush's plan also calls for looser regulations on oil refinery and pipeline construction, increased home-heating subsidies for the poor and new research on cleaner sources of energy. In all, it would cost $7.1 billion over 10 years.
After months of fighting Gore's charge that Bush, a former oil company executive, would favor the industry over consumers and the environment, Bush tried to use the energy issue as a weapon against his Democratic rival.
He blamed Gore and the Clinton administration for the high price of gasoline, electricity and home heating oil, saying their failure to develop an energy policy threatens to plunge the country into recession.
"Without a long-term strategy to ensure steady and reliable supplies of energy, we put at risk our economy and the way of life it supports," Bush told supporters in a factory here.
Bush said opening wilderness in Alaska and other parts of the country to energy exploration would pose no danger to the environment. But Gore, reveling in the signature issue of his 24-year public career--the environment--insisted otherwise.
"It would take years and years of development, which would cause decades of environmental damage, just to reap a few months of increased oil supply," Gore told environmentalists in Chevy Chase, Md. He called oil exploration in the refuge "bad environmental policy and bad energy policy."
The vice president spoke in a small grove surrounded by towering hemlocks on the grounds of the Audubon Naturalist Society.
"Pollution should never be the price of prosperity," he said.
At the same time, his running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, campaigned in a Houston park surrounded by smokestacks and silos to spotlight what Democrats call Bush's abysmal environmental record as governor of Texas.
"There's not a lot to brag about," Lieberman said as an odor of sulfur wafted by.
"Does Gov. Bush want to do for America's environment what he's done here in Texas?"
The long-distance sparring offered a preview of the conflict likely to mark the first debate between Bush and Gore on Tuesday in Boston.
As Gore and Bush jockey for the support of middle-class voters in their extraordinarily close race, the rising cost of fuel and electricity has emerged as a potent issue.
