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The trans-Alaska oil pipeline snakes across the Alaskan tundra under the Brooks Range in this Aug

Both of the main presidential candidates have a desire to maintain a healthy environment, but each have different plans with which to achieve this goal.

While securing more energy resources for the United States is an issue both candidates have been discussing, they don’t agree on how to accomplish it.

President Bush supports an Alaska natural-gas pipeline whereas Sen. John Kerry would like to implement renewable energy sources like wind- and solar-powered automobiles.

Bush also supports renewable energy sources by planning on extending tax incentives and developing hydrogen technology to fuel cars among other things.

The issue of the pipeline’s environmental effects are often balanced with economic considerations and voters will have to decide how serious they view the environmental effects to be.

“I am not an expert on the political sides of the issues you mention. ... There are ways of reducing the environmental impacts associated with drilling, but drilling with no environmental impacts at all is hard to imagine,” said Charles Corbett, professor and associate dean of the MBA program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, in an e-mail.

“Whether one feels that arctic drilling is appropriate depends on how one makes the trade-off between environmental concerns and energy needs,” he wrote.

In addition to Alaska, Bush would also like to generate natural gas from along the Gulf of Mexico.

“America can’t drill its way out of this predicament. We have to invent our way out of it,” Kerry said in a statement released by the American International Automobile Dealership, a lobbying group on behalf of car dealerships.

Kerry advocates the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not support a natural-gas pipeline in Alaska.

The environmental divide which stretches between Kerry and Bush has also divided students on campus.

CALPIRG was one of the groups that fought against drilling in Alaska, so we are more in stance with Kerry on this issue,” said Greg Walnnier, UCLA chapter chair of CALPIRG.

“The reason is that it is a huge wilderness preserve and it’s home to hundreds of types of animals. The pipeline would expose those areas to contamination. ... It will provide enough oil in the U.S. for only half a year and won’t diminish our dependence on foreign oil,” he said.

Bush plans on exposing 1 percent of the reserve to production of oil which will last for almost 20 years, according to information provided by the Bush-Cheney campaign.

“Our air is clearer and our water is cleaner than before the president took office,” said Steve Schmidt, a Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman.

The majority of the Bruin Republicans support Bush’s plan to produce oil in the reserve.

“The area they want to drill is the size of an airport in a barren part of land,” said Matthew Knee, chairman of Bruin Republicans.

In addition to the arctic pipeline, Kerry believes President Bush’s Clean Air Act, implemented to curb pollution, has not been sufficiently effective in aiding the environment.

“Kerry will reverse the Bush-Cheney rollbacks to our Clean Air Act, plug loopholes in the law, take aggressive action to stop acid rain, and use innovative, job-creating programs to reduce mercury emissions and other emissions that contribute to global warming,” according to the Kerry campaign Web site. A spokesman for the Kerry campaign location in California was too busy to comment Thursday.

But, both candidates support alternative energy sources to oil such as the use of electric or hydrogen cars.

“Electric cars and alternative-fuel cars do have substantial benefits with respect to clean air. Electric cars have no local impact on air quality,” Corbett wrote.

“Alternative-fuel cars, such as hydrogen-fueled cars, will have a similar effect in the short and medium term,” he additionally wrote.

Arctic drilling can adversely affect wildlife, Kerry said, or it can help the United States produce more oil domestically with minimal intrusion into the Reserve, Bush said.