Home Energy and Deep Peak Oil

Salon has interesting story and letter exchange about Peak Oil.   A commenter notes the story's focus on the transportation sector and throws out some numbers on potential for energy savings in buildings.   

Homes are such an easy target that it is sad higher energy efficiency standards were not adopted long ago. A 50% decrease in home energy use is easy, and is almost a cost wash between increased mortgage cost and energy savings per month. For the cost of going from granite to corian in the kitchen, or cutting one stall from the garage of a new home, home energy use could be cut 70%. With 1.8 million homes/yr expected to be built over the next 10 years, and with 250,000 homes replaced per year, huge cuts in home energy use are possible in the next 30 years. And the homes will look identical to how they do today! If homeowners can accept some changes in appearance, even bigger savings are possible.

Another gets far-out about how maybe the planet needs oil and mineral resources in the ground for some  purpose.   

... As a long ago hitch-hiking teenager, I posed such questions to a lift-providing, newly retired Colorado School of Mines Dean. 

I saw that old miner park that vintage Mercedes right there on Loveland Pass, extinguish his cigar, roll the convertible top down, remove his gold rim glasses and stare out into space as traffic crawled past us. He sat and thought for several moments amid timberline stillness and traffic swoosh and then he told me that in over 45 years of teaching how to remove natural resources and make money with the stuff, he had never once even considered the fact that the Earth may just have some unknown use for her black bounties and cash-ready ores.