In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush promised to promote “energy independence for our country.” His plan was to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The plan, which angered environmentalists who saw the breeding grounds of the caribou endangered, was quickly voted down in Congress.

It was the end of the plan, until Bush and Sen. John Kerry brought up energy again during the presidential debates. Both men wanted to “decrease dependency on imported oil.”

Currently, though, the trend is on more imports, not less. According to the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy, the United States consumed about 20 million barrels of oil a day in 2003.

Well over half of that total — 56 percent — was imported from abroad, with 20 percent coming from the Persian Gulf alone. EIA forecasts that, at current rates, the United States will be importing 70 percent of its oil from abroad by 2025.

Bush said again that he wants to increase drilling in the United States to replace foreign oil with domestic oil. Drilling in Alaska is not the answer.

America does need to reduce its dependency on foreign oil. Unfortunately, that also means decreasing our dependence on oil in general. We’re not going to find enough oil in Alaska to feed American SUVs, much less everything else we need it for.

According to the 2003 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the United States has about 31 billion barrels of oil, or 2.7 percent of the world’s oil supply. If we relied on domestic reserves, we’d have enough oil to last 4.5 years at the current rate of consumption, assuming no more is found.

Furthermore, this total includes sections of the Gulf of Mexico currently off limits for drilling. Increasing domestic production would do very little in the short term and almost nothing in the long term.

Instead of wasting the resources to drill a tiny bit of oil, we should spend the money on cultivating new sources of energy — whether they be wind, hydroelectric or solar.

Getting away from foreign oil won’t keep gas prices from going higher, which is what Bush wants to solve by using American oil. Since oil is traded on a global market, fuel prices would rise and fall according to the world price — even if the United States produced all of its oil domestically.

But, if we concentrate on finding new sources of energy and getting away from oil entirely — not just foreign oil — we’ll all be much better off in the long run.