When President Bush announced that “America is addicted to oil” in his State of the Union address, he shined a bright spotlight on our nation’s economic and national-security Achilles’ heel.

To address the dangerous threat posed by our dependence on foreign oil, the president proposed the Advanced Energy Initiative, which would focus attention and resources into the development of alternative forms of energy.

I applaud the president’s commitment to advancing energy independence, and I fully support his new initiative. But if we are serious about ending our oil addiction, we must address the unbridled consumption of gasoline within our transportation sector, which is the single largest and fastest growing source of U.S. oil usage. The way to do that is to raise the standard known as corporate average fuel economy (CAFE).

While research into and development of hydrogen, ethanol, solar and other technologies are clearly a wise investment of taxpayer funds, widespread practical use of any of these new technologies is years or even decades away, and at this point none appears to be a panacea to our oil addiction. A modest increase in CAFE standards, though, would, in the relative near future, significantly reduce the amount of oil imported from abroad and thereby reduce the amount of money that makes its way into the hands of unstable or even openly hostile regimes.

And, unlike the technology that will make the fuels of the future economically viable alternatives to oil, the technology to make cars and trucks go farther on a gallon of gasoline already exists. In a 2002 study, the National Academy of Sciences identified more than a dozen off-the-shelf technologies that could significantly improve vehicle fuel economy.

According to the Academy, large SUVs and pickup trucks using such technologies could get nearly 50 percent better gas mileage. And the Academy study did not even take into account newer technologies such as hybrid engines.

Yet, while technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, fuel-economy standards have largely been allowed to languish. Standards for cars are the same as they were in 1985, and the average vehicle today can travel no farther on a gallon of gasoline than it did in 1982. Recognizing that something must be done, President Bush recently raised standards somewhat for SUVs and pickup trucks, but before that those standards had remained unchanged since 1996.

Nearly every other industrialized nation has higher fuel-economy standards than the United States, including Canada, which recently signed an agreement with the world’s major automakers that will effectively boost the fuel economy of the vehicles sold across our northern border by 25 percent over the next five years. If it can be done in Canada, it can surely be done here in the states.

So late last year, I introduced legislation that would raise CAFE standards from the current average of 25 miles per gallon (mpg) to 33 mpg by 2015 — a modest increase in relation to what is technically achievable according to the Academy study.

Though they may be modest, the fuel-economy targets in my bill, H.R. 3762, would result in a significant reduction in U.S. oil consumption. By 2025, H.R. 3762 would save about 2.6 million barrels a day — far more oil than we would expect to pump out of ANWR.

And consumers would reap the benefits at the pump. Even after accounting for the cost of the new technologies, the average consumer would save more than $1000 in fuel costs over the life of the vehicle.

What’s more, we can achieve these savings without sacrificing safety. Even a representative of the auto industry said during testimony before the Science Committee last year that it is not necessary to sacrifice vehicle weight, and thereby safety, to increase fuel economy.

Automakers could, and would, continue manufacturing the vehicles people want to buy. The SUVs, minivans and pickups on the road today — Detroit’s cash cows — would still be on the road if CAFE standards were raised. They would just sport new technologies under the hood, such as cylinder deactivation or a continuously variable transmission, that would drastically improve their fuel efficiency.

There simply is no credible argument against raising CAFE standards. It would not force people into small, unsafe vehicles. It would not force consumers to give up the SUVs and minivans they so cherish. And it would not undermine the economic viability of the domestic auto industry. What it would do, though, is significantly cut our oil consumption while we move forward with the long-term development of new fuel options under the President’s Advanced Energy Initiative. I don’t see how any of us could argue against that.

Boehlert is chairman of the House Science Committee.