Oil prices closing in on $150 a barrel. Gasoline prices marching toward $5 a gallon.

And what does President Bush suggest? Drilling for more oil. And the usual chorus of voices rises in unison to say, "Amen."

Drill offshore, they say.

Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they say.

No, they are told with good reason, but they refuse to listen because those who argue the loudest for opening up areas in which to drill are trying to solve the wrong problem.

Yes, the high cost of gasoline hurts Americans financially and the high cost of oil increases the price of anything that requires a petroleum product to produce. But the real problem here is oil dependence — not merely foreign oil, but domestic oil, too.

Granted, no alternative fuel exists in abundance to make any dent in the use of oil, but that doesn't mean the nation should just continue its oil habit unabated. And that is what opening up offshore drilling and ANWR to drilling would do — feed America's habit.

It will take time for current forms of alternative fuels to develop to the point of efficiency and exist in quantities sufficient to make them financially viable and inexpensive enough for people to use. But this doesn't mean this country should continue using oil as if it were an unlimited resource.

The smart move must be a combination of two things — a push for quicker development of an alternative fuel source and an effort by Americans to lessen their use of anything based on a petroleum product.

Guess what? It's already happening because oil and gasoline prices have risen.

In its April "Traffic Volume Trends" report, the Department of Trans-portation reported that travel on all roads in the U.S. dropped 1.8 percent from April 2007. That translates into 1.4 billion less miles traveled. June 19, a CNN report added the fact that, from January to April, Americans trimmed driving by 20 billion miles.

Do the math. If the national average of miles per gallon is 25, Americans used 56 million fewer gallons of gas in April for a savings of $200 million. If the national average is 15 mpg, Americans used 93 million fewer gallons of gas, a savings of around $400 million.

From January to April, at 25 mpg, Americans used 800 million fewer gallons of gas, saving more than $3 billion; at 15 mpg, Americans used 1.3 billion fewer gallons of gas, saving more than $5.5 billion.

One barrel of oil yields 18.5 gallons of gasoline. Thus, from January through April, Americans saved between 43 million to 70 million barrels of oil.

Of course, this is a mere drop in the barrel, so to speak, because the U.S. consumes 20.5 million barrels of oil a day.

But it is a start. And that is what is needed — a start from which people can begin seeing progress made.

Two other ways people can start making a difference involve bottled water and plastic bags.

According to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil yearly to make the bottles that are filled with drinking water. And it takes 38 million barrels of oil, a figure derived by a statistics class at Indiana University, just to make the plastic bags you tote home filled with groceries.

Consumers can easily make dents in oil consumption by using tap water instead of bottled water and using cloth or canvas shopping bags at the grocery store.

Again, yes, merely drops in the barrel, but, over time, the barrel will fill and consumption will fall.

The most important thing people must do is make sure whomever is sworn in as president in January demands this nation work toward ending its oil habit. And that demand must come in as dramatic a fashion as when President Kennedy in May 1961 announced the goal of sending an American to the moon before the end of the decade.

Then, as now, the technology did not fully exist for such a mission, but American ingenuity and tenacity put an American on the moon and brought him back in slightly more than seven years.

That same sense of purpose and mission can and must be rekindled now to end this nation's oil addiction. This will not occur overnight nor within a decade, but with ingenuity and tenacity, this nation can make giant strides on the road to safe, clean, alternative fuels.

— Richard Larsen is a deputy opinion page editor at The Star. His e-mail address is rlarsen@VenturaCountyStar.com.