Words alone won't end U.S. oil addiction

When a Texas oilman like George Bush says our addiction to oil is a problem and we have got to do something about it, it's time to do so.

Unfortunately, although the president's focus on the problem in his State of the Union address was helpful, his suggestions for action will not alone solve the problem.

The problem is that earth's supply of oil will ultimately dry up. Experts are divided about when that will be, maybe late in this century, perhaps early in the next. They do not question that it will ultimately happen. The event can be postponed, perhaps by drilling in areas currently considered unprofitable or environmentally questionable to develop. Deposits of oil shale, where rock must be processed to extract hidden oil, might yield a little more, although the process has hitherto been considered prohibitively expensive. In the end humans will have to run their world on some alternative source of energy.

Conservation would enable the oil to last longer. But China and India are swallowing up more and more oil as their economies expand at an awesome pace. The United States, the largest consumer of oil of any country in the world, owns about 3 percent of the world's oil reserves and consumes about 25 percent of global production. The recently high price of oil, hovering around the $60-a-barrel mark, has encouraged some Americans to use their big SUVs less or to explore buying more fuel-efficient cars, but this is a minuscule drop in a very big bucket of consumption. Although there can be grand talk of making the United States self-sufficient in oil, it is a pipe dream. As long as Americans consume as much as they do, they will need to import oil from regions of the world like the Middle East that must be considered unstable.

President Bush announced an Advanced Energy Initiative. One objective is to change the way Americans power their homes and offices. This would mean development of emission-free coal-fired plants, new solar and wind technologies, and safe nuclear energy.

The other objective is to change the way Americans power their automobiles. This means producing more efficient hybrid and electric and hydrogen-powered cars. It means trying to produce by 2013 ethanol not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks or switch grass.