In the summer of 1859, the world's first commercial oil well began pumping in Titusville, Pa. Over the next century, Americans invented the modern oil economy. The country fueled its own industrial revolution and two world wars, with a healthy petroleum surplus to export. Along the way, as production spread from Pennsylvania to Texas and the Plains states, and as auto manufacturers sold millions of affordable cars to the masses, the American way of life took hold.

Today, commuters drive long distances from houses in the suburbs, past strip malls and drive-through restaurants, to jobs in the world's leading economy. Yet the country's safety and prosperity now depend increasingly on its willingness to break free of its historic reliance on oil.

America has gone from being the largest oil producer to the largest importer. It consumes one-quarter of the world's oil, and its once-bountiful domestic reserves have dwindled to just 3 percent of the world's supplies. Looking forward, U.S. dependence on foreign oil is only projected to increase. The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that by 2025, America will import between 63 percent and 72 percent of its oil.

This worsening oil addiction poses a triple threat to America's national security, economy, and environmental health. A 50-year legacy of petro-centric policy decisions has left the United States deeply entangled in the politically unstable Middle East -- the wellspring of jihadist terrorism -- because that is where two-thirds of global petroleum reserves are located.

Meanwhile, the country's growing reliance on imports means that Americans are sending more dollars overseas, pushing the U.S. trade deficit to record heights. In 1998, Americans spent $50 billion on oil imports; by 2004, the tab had more than tripled, to $179 billion. Occasional spikes in oil prices have thus far done little lasting harm to the economy, but a major disruption of oil supplies -- say, from a terrorist attack in the Persian Gulf -- could easily trigger a recession.

On top of all of this, the country's prodigious oil consumption is spurring global climate change, with all of its insidious side effects -- from the receding polar ice caps, to increasingly destructive hurricanes, to the potential spread of exotic diseases such as West Nile virus and bird flu.

The spillover costs of this oil habit are becoming prohibitive. It's time to put American ingenuity to work inventing the world's first post-oil economy.

President George W. Bush made waves when he belatedly admitted in his sixth State of the Union address that "America is addicted to oil." Yet, despite his apparent epiphany, he and his Republican allies remain firmly wedded to the status quo. They want to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by opening up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where reserves are difficult to reach and expensive to extract, and where the yield would probably amount to a tiny fraction of the country's regular demand.

Incredibly, the White House and congressional Republicans last year showered the oil industry and other fossil fuel producers with more than $11 billion in tax breaks, even though they had been reaping record profits because of soaring oil prices. The much-heralded Energy Policy Act of 2005 did practically nothing to change energy consumption patterns in the transportation sector, which accounts for two-thirds of the nation's oil use and one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions implicated in global warming. In signing the energy bill, Bush consigned the nation to drift slowly toward a clean energy future, when it should be accelerating its progress.

Administration critics, meanwhile, have issued ringing but vague calls for a new "Manhattan Project" or "Apollo moon shot" effort to help the United States achieve energy independence. They urge adoption of ambitious national goals, such as creating 3 million more "new energy" jobs, or cutting oil use in half in 20 years. Conspicuously missing from these well-intentioned schemes, however, is a credible road map for getting from here to there.

And so, the United States remains suspended between the past and the future, between oil and clean energy, between the administration's more-of-the- same approach to energy and its critics' over-the-horizon solutions.

It is time for progressives to fill in the blanks in their clean energy blueprints. The country needs concrete ideas for changing the way it consumes energy in the here and now, not in the distant future. And policymakers must recognize that making oil more expensive to burn is the sine qua non of any credible plan for energy security.

What would such a plan entail? The key is a mandatory national cap on greenhouse gas emissions. This longtime environmental policy goal has now become the first imperative of energy policy as well, for a simple reason: The most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is produced by burning oil and other fossil fuels. So a cap on greenhouse gases would immediately spur the development of alternative fuels and cleaner technologies. When combined with emissions credits that companies could sell or buy, the resulting "capand- trade" system would offer a flexible, decentralized, and market-driven way to lower the nation's output of greenhouse gases.

It would also create the framework for several other major steps that could galvanize progress toward a clean energy future: first, replacing the stalled auto fuel economy standards with a new regime of "tailpipe trading" that would operate within the national greenhouse gas emissions trading market. By raising the cost of burning fossil fuels, this system would also spur the commercialization of the most attractive alternatives, especially home-grown biofuels. Finally, capping carbon emissions and creating incentives for innovation would stimulate U.S. efforts to capture the burgeoning global market in clean energy sources and technologies.

The market potential of clean energy -- for the heartland states where crops can be grown to produce biofuels; for Detroit, which will need to produce new generations of cars; and for the U.S. economy as a whole -- is enormous. By one estimate, the global race to build clean, energy-friendly technologies is already worth more than $600 billion and growing. In the same way oil made horsepower and whale blubber obsolete, these clean technologies point the way toward a post-oil economy.

A Progressive Clean Energy Strategy

The environmental, energy, and strategic challenges posed to the United States by its lingering dependence on imported oil, coupled with China's growing appetite for it, vividly illustrate why it is high time for the president and Congress to come to terms with the reality of global energy and environmental interdependence. No country exists in a vacuum. The consumption, output, and environmental refuse of one roaring national economy sends ripple effects throughout the world. America must shape its national policies -- and engage with the rest of the world to shape international policies -- accordingly.

In addition to re-engaging with the international partners that America shunned by withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. policymakers must embark on a far-reaching, four-part clean energy strategy here at home.

Step 1: Cap carbon emissions now. As an environmental policy strategy, the cap-and-trade approach has already proven to be wildly successful, most notably in the fight against sulfur dioxide pollutants from power plants that cause acid rain. The key to its success is that the policy focuses only on the intended outcome -- total emissions levels -- rather than mandating specific technologies or practices that industries must use to meet the target. Companies are free to find the most innovative ways possible to meet their obligations -- and they are given incentives to actually exceed those obligations.

For the same reasons, a cap-and-trade approach that covers carbon emissions will prove to be an effective energy policy strategy. It can serve as the lever that has thus far been missing to push the economy away from oil consumption and toward more sustainable alternatives.

Step 2: Shift from fuel economy standards to tailpipe trading. For nearly half a century, transportation has accounted for about one-quarter of total U.S. energy use and two-thirds of total oil consumption. Tailpipe exhaust remains a leading source of air pollution and accounts for roughly one-third of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide. Therefore, a national cap-and-trade system should include limits on tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks.

As in cap-and-trade proposals for energy producers, factories, and other big emitters, a tailpipe trading system would give automakers a profit motive to produce cars and trucks that keep carbon dioxide emissions below national standards. Companies whose fleets miss the mark would have to buy credits from other companies (any regulated company, not just other automakers), or pay fines to the government.

Because of the profit motive it creates, such a policy is far more likely to reduce oil consumption than the country's stalled system of miles-pergallon standards. Those standards, known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, are mired in congressional gridlock and unlikely to be significantly tightened anytime soon, as the 2005 energy bill deliberations proved.

Step 3: Replace oil with homegrown biofuels. As their name implies, biofuels are made from crops like soy, corn, and peanuts -- even plant waste that would otherwise rot and emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Biofuels are infinitely renewable, relatively clean burning, and safe to handle, and they can be produced in abundance here on American soil.

One of the most promising biofuels is biodiesel. In the United States, most of it now comes from soybeans and recycled cooking fats, but those represent only a fraction of potential sources. Other sources include canola, corn, cotton, mustard, peanuts, sunflowers, and even lard. Like most other vehicle fuels, biodiesel releases carbon dioxide when it is burned. Those emissions, however, are recycled by the crops grown to make new batches of biodiesel. New crops breathe in or "sequester" carbon dioxide in equal or greater amounts than the CO₂ released by combusting biodiesel to run cars, trucks, and heavy machinery. When the Energy Department studied that closed carbon loop, it concluded that buses using pure biodiesel emit 78 percent less CO₂ than those using petrodiesel.

Step 4: Capture the clean technology market. In the same way that the birth of commercial oil production helped usher in a new industrial era, the U.S. economy already has at its disposal new energy-saving technologies that may serve as the cornerstone of the next energy era. And in the same way that the oil crisis of the 1970s spurred businesses and consumers to do more with less oil, advances already at hand can help dramatically reduce oil consumption. By one estimate, cars made from advanced carbon composite material or lightweight steel can nearly double the efficiency of today's popular hybrid-electric cars and light trucks, while improving safety and performance.

Although the future of alternative energy, energy efficiency, and other green technologies -- collectively termed "clean tech" -- is still somewhat uncertain, many clean energy industries are growing rapidly. For instance, the global solar power market alone generates more than $7 billion per year and is expanding at an annual rate of more than 30 percent.

Bush has refused to do anything serious about global warming, because he says greenhouse gas regulation would wreak havoc on the U.S. economy. That was his main rationale for pulling the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, which took effect in February 2005. But the truth is that the clean technologies that can curb global warming represent a tremendous economic growth opportunity -- worth $607 billion in 2005.

To be sure, Kyoto was a flawed deal for the United States that needed to be improved. But this is an economic lesson America should already have learned. Consider that shortly after Congress created the nation's clean air and clean water laws in the 1970s, they had created 50,000 jobs in the construction industry and 75,000 jobs in other sectors. The sluggish U.S. job growth in the months after the spikes in oil prices triggered by the 2005 hurricanes was just another reminder of how vulnerable the U.S. economy is to fuel price shocks in general.

America's national security, economic interests, and environmental health demand that policymakers neither accept today's energy policy stalemate nor passively wait for a distant wholesale shift to a clean energy future. Although the country is gradually moving away from a 50-plus-year policy of propping up despotic regimes to protect oil supplies, it has yet to supplant that policy with a viable alternative.

Despite his admission that America is addicted to oil, Bush seems basically content with this state of drift, as evidenced by his enthusiastic embrace of the utterly conventional 2005 energy bill.

It therefore falls to progressives to champion a post-oil economic plan that will yield real progress now. They must make the case to the American people that no leader or political party should be considered credible on national security unless it puts bold energy reforms at the center of its agenda.

Jan Mazurek is director of the Energy & Environment Project at the Progressive Policy Institute