State of the Union analysis: So has the President gone green? Not just yet

State of the Union addresses are transient affairs, their details usually forgotten within 24 hours. Most of those delivered by George Bush however have contained a phrase that lingers. In 2002 it was the "axis of evil" of Iraq, North Korea and Iran. This time it will surely be Mr Bush's remark that America is "addicted to oil". But the 2006 speech may be even more notable for what he did not say. Not once did he mention global warming. The words "conservation" and "Kyoto" did not once pass his lips. There was no reference to higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, which consume roughly half the oil used by the US.

In short, reports that Mr Bush has gone green are premature. Once again the President was arguing that the solution to both America's energy problem and global climate change lay not in reducing per capita consumption of energy, but in using technology to find new sources of energy. On one point at least environmentalists can take heart. Usually Mr Bush never misses an opportunity to demand that greater use be made of domestic US oil resources. This time however he did not call for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling - acknowledgement perhaps that the measure, which failed again in Congress late last year, may now be off the table for good.

Generally reaction here has been underwhelming. Most green groups described Mr Bush's ideas as "nothing new", and in a scathing editorial, The New York Times lambasted the proposals as "woefully insufficient". "Once again," the paper said, "he chose to substitute long-range research, and a single programme at that, for the immediate investments that have to be made across the entire industrial sector". His approach amounted to "a negligence from which the globe may never recover".

Grounds for cynicism abound. Since Richard Nixon, presidents have bemoaned the country's reliance on foreign oil. In 1979, at the height of the second "oil shock", President Carter promised that the US would never again consume more imported oil "than we did in 1977".

In fact, imports have risen ever since. Today, the US buys roughly 12 million barrels a day of oil from abroad, some 60 per cent of total daily consumption of 21 million barrels. Of those imports, the biggest suppliers are Venezuela, Canada and Nigeria. The Middle East, according to figures for the first 11 months of 2005, supplies less than a fifth.

In the light of these statistics, Mr Bush's pledge to cut US imports from the Middle East by more than 75 per cent by 2025 is far less ambitious than it sounds.

Even so, as Greenpeace pointed out, Mr Bush has taken a small step in the right direction. "The first step in curing an addiction is recognising that you have a problem," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy expert at the environmental group. "He's stood up and taken the first step in the 'oil-aholics' programme."