I live on the east side, around 82nd/2nd Ave - I'd be interested in helping bring some greenmarket(s) to the area.  Let me know if I can help, though I'm short on time as it is.

(email's in my profile)

Make people acutely aware of how much energy they use by making them hand-carry it!  For instance, pass a law that will only sell 2 gallons of gasoline at a time, and the customer has to carry a gallon fuel jug in each hand a minimum distance of at least a football field, then hand pour the fuel into his tank.  He/she then repeats the process nine more times to purchase the twenty gallons for a normal topping of the tank.  Nobody is allowed to just pull into a gas station anymore--road  markers would show the minimum parking distance on the street or parking lot.

Same thing for fuel oil.  You cannot pay to have someone easily pump it into your household tank.  The tanker parks down the street, and you shlep it home two gallons at time. Rinse and repeat as required til your oil tank is filled.  Must be hand-carried, no little red wagons allowed!

Same idea for natgas and/or propane except your shlepping a large number of five gallon steel containers.  The new conservation law will require that the gas pipelines will be disconnected from every house.  Ever carried two five gallon propane tanks?  You will learn to conserve real quick!

Since people are fighting and dying for fossil fuels, aka Iraq, I think further conservation can be achieved whereby the consumer gets doused with a pint of slaughterhouse blood at the starting time he/she initiates the long distance refueling process.  The next bloody dousing will occur at the twenty gallon milestone.

Water is even heavier than gasoline, and much more precious.  Yet, nearly everyone takes it for granted, so much for granted that we even crap in our own drinking water!  The conservation law would require everyone to hand carry all the water they use TWICE the distance of fossil fuels.  Ever hand-carry a five gallon water jug two hundred yards?  People will quickly abandon flush toilets for humanure recycling, and forget long, hot showers!

Very, very few people have purely gravity fed water to their sink and bathroom faucets.  Most of us would not have water at all except for the astounding numbers of electrical powered water pumps that all municipal water utilities employ.  Then very specialized electrical powered sewage pumps are needed to process this waste.  The energy savings potential by making people use water very sparingly is mind-boggling.

Same thing for electricity.  You would be forced to prepay your estimated electrical usage with cash and pedaling time on an exercise generator.  Roughly 50 watt/pedal hrs per 1 kw/hr of electricity.

America would soon be very athletically fit and require nearly no oil and gas imports.  We would quickly stop chasing the false dreams of ever-bigger McMansions and fancy, high powered heavy vehicles.

The cost of implementing this plan would be practically nothing compared to the cost and energy savings.  No, you cannot hire someone to do the heavy lifting for you [gotta show ID], besides, your neighbors would immediately recognize if you hired a 'ringer' to shlep the liquids.  Only exception would be for the aged and the handicapped, but only family members would be allowed to help.

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
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Efficiency, Fractional Reserve Banking and how saving energy can backfire....

I will not dispute that saving energy is a good thing, as an individual I do it as often as I can and it certainly saves (my landlord) money. However, as I understand, the money that it saves, unless it is reinvested in the preservation or rebuilding of natural capital, is simply used to use more energy. If deposited in a bank they will lend out some larger amount (6+ times) for people A) starting businesses, B) buying McMansions, C) doing other energy consumptive things. Now some of this probably goes into people buying/retrofitting for more efficiency (which still uses more eMergy than not retrofitting in many cases--depending on the time scale) and into people investing in natural capital (like wilderness preservation, conversion of conventional to organic farming, etc.) but is less likely to be the case unless these people preserving/improving natural capital can get some money out of the deal.

Until a bank (and there already are many socially responsible banks, and a lot more funds, and not to mention to the Permaculture Credit Union) is formed that exclusively invests in natural capital restoration and parallel systems construction (still using energy here, but at least its with a much better goal in mind than simply buying a prius) some of whatever money you save with efficiency improvements will only end up buying more energy.

So keep it in mind (as well as jevon's paradox) and keep retrofitting; by some accounts, getting into action at this stage is potentially more important than the effect.

Time for the "Victory Garden" to become popular again. Also Tilapia can be used in a symbiant recirculating system to produce food without waisting fertilizer. The veggies produce O2 and the fish produce fertilizer for the plants. Focus should be placed on using electric based tools. Electric chain saws, electric weedeaters, and buying solar panels to recharge them. The key is going to be in more people buying alternatives, (solar is my personal favorite) and making it more profitable for the companies to make more and develope the industry further. They make refrigerators and freezers that work on 12 volt so an inverter is not even needed. they are big, well insulated, ugly things, but don't use much juice. There is a roofing material, which resembles shingles in appearance,made of photolytic cells,  that if you covered the avg. house with would produce more electric than the avg. house uses. Think if every house in the us had a roof like that. Buy a motorcycle to go back and forth to work. Car pool.

Ok, interesting stuff folks, but enough of the big picture "everyone should do X" and please write down things that YOU will be doing in your LOCAL community to help prepare for Peak Oil. This is sort of like writing your peak oil to-do list for 2006.

Having studied peak oil and related topics rather intensely over the last six months, I heartily agree that it is important to closely monitor developments (hats off to TOD!) and is even more important - and prudent - to take action.

It can be rather daunting to contemplate what to do under the circumstances we face.  The good news is that there are many aware people who are collecting information and techniques and starting intentional communities to put those practical ideas to work.

So the first suggestion I have is to link up with such a group, even if they don't have a presence in your local area.  My partner and I, under the auspices of the Post Carbon Institute, have started a local post-carbon "outpost" in our community (Sacramento California).  On the board of PCI are such notables as Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg, and James Howard Kunstler.  We've been very pleased with the support provided by the institute which has included hosting a web site, consulting on getting the group started, and an excellent handbook.

I am fortunate to have a large enough back yard to have a couple large ponds (20,000gal +) in which are some very happy fish. 2006 will be in fine tuning the ponds and finishing the third and last one. 2007 will be building greenhouses and learning hydroponics. Then the last will be to cover the roof with the solar roofing material. I have had Motorcycles all my life and havent put insurance on my car or truck for over a year. If my development would allow it I would have a couple cows out there too. This is my "Great Depression" insurance. I may not be able to afford to drive anywhere, but I'll have electric and food.

"Be the change you want in the world" - Ghandi.  This wisdom helps guide my action plan for 2006:

learn a new paradigm for living: permaculture

acquire a plot in a community garden

work with my neighbors to "glean" fruit and nuts which otherwise are wasted

start a worm compost bin

move my bank account to a local credit union

purchase local products from local business wherever possible

reduce, reduce, reduce, reuse, reuse, recycle

My plan to reduce energy consumption in the United States is to move to Australia.

When choosing where to put our energies promoting and implementing changes, it's helpful to remember that getting a person to make a behaviour change requires a lot of work sustain their commitment to the change. They are likely to replase.  But getting folks to make a fixed change to their system means that the change itself changes the behaviour.

So, for example, one can choose to promote getting people to leave their cars at home and take the bus (change their behaviour for getting to and from work), or one can promote getting people to accept the condition of to living closer to where one works (change where they live).  For example, one can ask people to take shorter showers (change behaviour), or one can install their low-flow shower heads for them (change infrastructure).  For example, one can turn down the heat or wear sweaters (behaviour), or one can put in a ground-source heat pump (infrastructure).  And of course, it's best of all if one can convince folks (and ourselves) to do both!

For us personally, the main energy-saving commitments will be to keep our living space small and urban (in spite of pressures to move); to upgrade our building's envelope to make it more efficient (and resilient to temperature fluctuations if  shortages happen); and to not shade out the little plot of usable land we have for growing food (practicing permaculture).

These are all pretty doable.  

The interesting thing is how few people will do them!  Convincing folks to put in composting toilets and buy electric cars would be a non-starter for most people.  But getting them to down-scale their extravagant plans for a kitchen reno while, upscaling their willingness to put in a super-efficient heating system, that's more possible.  

The key ingredient for green markets is making sure the produce is organically grown.  Conventionally grown produce is heavily dependent on fossil fuel inputs.  Artificial fertilizer requires natural gas, pesticides are made from petroleum, etc.  As these become scarcer, natural fertizers will grow in importance once again.  These "organically" grown plants are stronger and naturally more pest resistant.   This will be much healthier for the local environment as well as the consumer.

Supporting and helping local organic markets will help make the transition to less fossil energy easier in the localities that do this.  As more growers and markets spring up, economies of scale will hopefully help bring down prices.   Eventually I suspect organic produce to be much cheaper than "convential" produce as the price to farm artificially becomes more prohibitive.

Food and transportation will be major hurdles, but this along with encouraging construction of bike trails, lock posts for bikes at businesses and other public buildings will go a long way in easing the transition in the localities that adopt these with enthusiasm.

The problem with "organically" grown produce is the reduction (depletion) of minor elements in the soil. The vegitables we eat today, while good for us, are less good for us pound for pound the they were a decade or two ago. To supplement this, the application of some type of "fertilizer" is necessary. This requires mining of those minor element, which in turn requires an energy source. Damn it this is a vicious cycle....

Yes, products like this help replenish soil, but leaching out of the plants rootzone often happens quickly. Reapplication in your typical outside garden type invironment is necessary to keep levels where they are most benificial. In my experiance, many times foliar applications of liquid forms of micro's seems to reduce total usage. There is lees chance of leaching if the plant absorbs it directly thru the tissue. Runoff then has the chance of being picked up by the root system before it leaches past where the roots can pick it up. I live in florida so have had much experiance with this problem. Sand just doesn't hold anything in it. My solution is going to be the creation of a closed system. I am just about done with my fish ponds, and next will be the hydroponic greenhouses. This is the only way I have been ably to get the math to work ie consumed energy, and raw materials vs. finished product. I plan on sending water samples off for annalysis, those results will give me a basis of what I need to add to the system, and unused plant parts will be thrown back into the pond for consumtion by the fish. If you have had sucsess with a different method, I would be interested in hearing some more of the particulars. Amounts used, results gotten, how they were done.

There is a coop that delivers fresh organic fruit and vegetables to my community - and I'm sure they could do the Upper East Side too.  They deliver in bulk and local members take turns sorting and bagging it.  It is a little labor intensive, but easier than growing it yourself.  Food coops went out of favor in the 80's as stores offered a larger and more varied selection, but it can be a social as well as eco friendly alternative.  Check them out at:
http://www.purpledragon.com/