What grass roots and/or governmental responses to peak oil are possible in the U.S & New York?
(For the sake of flow, in this language I use man but I mean man kind or human)

From the Cuba film we learned how an industrialized culture could collectively transition to a sustainable life style that works with their environment. This seemed to be a relatively painless transition in Cuba, therefore the logical question is: what is it about the Cuban culture and more specifically their world view that allowed for this? An obvious factor is in the values taught by the general politics of the society. When comparing Cuba and the US we must consider how a Communist regime versus a Capitalistic regime influences the people’s character. In Capitalism the two main goals are personal gain and consumption and the idea is that this should be achieved in a competitive nature. This is ironic because the Cuba example tells us that survival is possible through solidarity and flow with our environment, the nature of survival here is not a competitive one. You can only push upstream for so long in a river running downstream. From our upbringing, since the time of small and impressionable heads and heart, we are taught life perspectives such as “survival of the fittest” and “through hard work all is attained”. This pins us against the world, a commonly accepted thought in Western culture; if we think that life is tough and we must constantly fight to survive how can we be expected to unify in times of collapse? With out a community based culture, which teaches people the existence of other living beings other than themselves, there is no solidarity. It is false to think that we observe the world, this is what leads to the unsustainable mindset. The fact is that we are a part (no apart from) of the world. There are origin myths that are taught by every culture and in this culture (an idea belonging to civilization it self) world was created for man and man must conquer this world. (Ishmael) This is true in Capitalist and in Communist societies; however in Communism there is no competitive drive. With the absence of competition between men, man is taught to help his neighbor and work to better society (in transitional "communism", really the State) and not himself.
I have no hope for the successful survival of the West (therefore possibly the world). Because I think that changing deep rooted values about men kind’s purpose, the world’s creation and how we should live, takes at least two generations and time is not a luxury that the civilization can afford no matter how many folds profits increase per barrel of oil. Life can not be exchanged for green, red or blue pieces of paper it can only be taught; civilization (as marked by cities) will always be anti-life.
The Cuba film has taught us that mass production of essentials such as food is neither efficient nor sustainable once oil has peaked. Since this is what almost the entire US population depends on to get really anything including food and water, how will we survive?
Humans in the civilization are like a bird in a cage, a bird who has forgotten how to fly. In cities we are caged from nature- we don’t know how to make our own food and find clean water. A bird quickly learns to eat food and drink water out of a plastic container, the same way we quickly adapted to the convenience of store bought everything – we created money and learned how to use it, we put all of the meaning of life and values of all life on Earth in to a piece of inked paper, stained from the blood of the Earth.
Let’s take a look at a domesticated dog’s survival methods, which are much like our own. A dog begs and hopes that sympathy with gain him what he needs and wants. Otherwise, if the first method fails, a dog simply takes, until he is satisfied- but each time he is satisfied it takes more and more to satisfy him. This is the same with obesity- each time you eat more than you need your stomach stretches, the larger it gets the more it take to fill it up and satisfy its needs, eventually it will stretch no more and you die. The Earth has usually given us what we ask of it, and when it doesn’t want to give us things -such as the thousands of millions of years old cumulated energy of the world- it hides them. In this case man forcefully extracts what he needs to power civilizations and attain the short lived comfort for humans.
So, again I ask: how can a capitalistic society transition to a permaculture inclusive and sustainable way of life?
Firstly, the “free” market must be closed; in fact the growth of the economy must be stopped. We cannot learn to and start to live sustain-ably if people are still investing their wealth in order to gain more wealth. In a time of collapse money will not mean much any way. Agriculture, water bottling and such institutions as universities and hospitals must all be decentralized and relocated. Everything that anybody needs to survive must be only a bike ride away. This takes care of some of the problems for suburbia. However in the cities there must be a much more complex system of urban gardening (on roof tops).
I don’t know how crime can be regulated since I don’t think that true solidarity of small communities or villages is attainable.