"Let me put it bluntly," President George W. Bush told a St. Louis audience, "We are too dependent on oil." Bush made a similarly blunt point during his State of the Union address in January, saying Americans are "addicted to oil." The question, then and now, is what he is going to do about it.

Bush was in town for a conference on renewable energy sponsored jointly by the U.S. Energy and Agriculture departments. The president used the occasion to pledge that investments in alternative energy sources will continue even though the price of gasoline has dropped dramatically over the last two months. That's crucial. Developing alternative energy sources is a long-term commitment that requires consistent investment, regardless of the vicissitudes in the price of a barrel of oil.

The Bush administration has committed millions of dollars to researching new energy sources, including $250 million to solve technical problems that now make it prohibitively expensive to mass produce ethanol from switch grass and plant waste. But that amount is paltry compared to the billions it has bestowed in tax breaks on oil companies to encourage more drilling, more consistent supply and lower prices. If we're going to get serious about breaking our oil addiction, we're going to have to stop subsidizing the industry that's keeping us hooked.

Bush certainly had come to the right place to talk about the importance of corn-based ethanol. Like him, we're enthusiastic about its future. That said, ethanol alone never will solve America's addiction to foreign oil. More than half of the oil we burn every day comes from overseas. That's too great an amount to be replaced any time soon with corn-based ethanol. We could import Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane, but high sugar tariffs make importing it too expensive and the administration has shown no willingness to reduce them.

Talk, no matter how well-intentioned, is not an alternative energy strategy. For all the apparent urgency in the president's message last week, his administration has yet to produce a comprehensive plan to guide the nation to where he says — and many scientists agree — it must go.

Bush spoke last week about the need to drill for oil and natural gas in Alaska and offshore. That's a trade-off many conservationists don't want to make.

Conserving fuel would have a much more immediate impact on our need for foreign oil. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have refused to increase car-mileage standards or seriously incentivize American car manufacturers to design and produce more fuel-efficient cars.

The president touted efforts to build more vehicles that run on E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. But owners of those vehicles often can't find so-called E85 fuel, so they fill up with gas.

Bush envisioned a future in which newly built homes are equipped with solar panels to generate electricity. The federal government needs to do much more than talk to help us get there. Instead, it is states like California that have taken the lead on such measures while the federal government lags far behind.

Cheerleading for ethanol and alternative energy is fine. But we need a comprehensive energy policy that goes beyond just providing tax breaks to oil companies. Now is the time.