IT'S DIFFICULT to decide which is more depressing: the goal the president has set to cure us of our "addiction" to oil, or the prescription he has written to help us kick the habit. In his State of the Union address President Bush set as his goal the replacement of some 75 percent of the oil we import from the Middle East by 2025. Since about 17 percent of our imported oil comes from that volatile region, that would mean reducing total imports by a bit less than 13 percent, although from what base--current consumption, or consumption in 2025--is unclear.

Unfortunately, the oil market doesn't work that way. Unless we target Middle East producers with quotas, probably a violation of World Trade Organization rules, any import reductions will come out of the hides of higher-cost producers, not the Middle Eastern countries. Furthermore, our European allies, who made their reserves available to us during the supply interruptions caused by Katrina, would remain dependent on imports from the Middle East. And our reduced use would probably be offset by increased demand from China and India, diluting any effect the proposed cutbacks would have on the price of crude oil.

But let's not be churlish. President Bush at least avoided the grandiosity of Presidents Nixon and Carter, both of whom promised to end completely our dependence on imports. And he abandoned the unrealistic notion that we can feed our petroleum cravings with homegrown rather than imported oil, by gearing up domestic production in Alaska, the Rockies, and elsewhere. That concession to reality can't have been an easy step for a Texas oilman to take.

So let's concede that we should indeed attempt, in the president's words, to move "beyond a petroleum-based economy," or at least to meet his import-reduction target. Unfortunately, the president has chosen to travel a well-worn path that any conservative should avoid. We are to have a series of government investments in alternative technologies: $281 million already targeted for clean coal technologies is to be sped up; $54 million will be spent to develop emissions-free coal plants that capture and store carbon emissions; $148 million devoted to a Solar America Initiative; $44 million for wind energy research; $150 million to help develop bio-based transportation fuels from agricultural waste products such as "wood chips and stalks, or switch grass."

There are more bits and pieces, but you get the idea. The president has stolen from his father's new friend, Bill Clinton, the idea that sprinkling relatively tiny bits of money over a long list of projects creates the impression of real action. Perhaps we are lucky that the president didn't propose to spend even more on these projects, for they all share a fatal flaw: They may be little projects, but they reflect big-government thinking. The central planners in the Department of Energy decide which technologies hold the greatest promise, and spend taxpayers' money to find out if they can do a better job than markets in allocating resources to technologies that just might yield alternatives to oil.