I'm going to beg to differ Patricia -- I think there is a lot the consumer can do, particularly concerning gas and electricity. When I was teaching gang kids in South Central L.A. in the early 1990's we discovered that it was easy to convert our cars to run on alcohol fuel and that we could even produce our own "moonshine" to run them. If I had stayed in the U.S. longer I would be doing this today. Another project we did was to convert a car to run on electricity. You can see one of our early efforts to create our own home grown fuel (which we called "Demonol", a democratic fuel of the people, by the people, for the people) here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEmj22jj8w4
In Germany my wife and I met and travelled with a policeman who converted his mercedes to run on vegetable oil, and here in Egypt I meet cab drivers who had their cabs converted to run on natural gas in an hour.
These are all little steps we can do with profound effects!
Check around, and particularly look at home power magazine for ideas and resources. We can't give up the fight that easily -- and I think we can do all this without the governments help!
http://homepower.com/
You can download the current issue for free, so it is worth checking out!
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