Greetings to all TOD:NYC readers. My ambitious plan to liveblog the conference ran into technical glitches (lack of a reliable, scalable and power-dense energy supply into my laptop - har har har). Let me just try to set the scene a little bit and leave it up to others who actually took notes to report on individual speakers.

The Local Solutions to the Energy Dilemma conference kicked off today at the Community Church of New York, a Unitarian-Universalist church on East 35th Street in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. The grand cavernous space of the church's brick interior provided a welcome contrast to the traffic-clogged crosstown route outside, where many lanes of drivers jostle for position, allowing an occasional horn-blare to be heard within the sanctuary.

There were ample audio and video recordings being made, so I am looking forward to seeing those sounds and images being made available online, hopefully in the coming days. It was a pleasure to welcome people from all around the country and world (Vermont and Australia were well represented) into New York City.

Topics covered this morning and afternoon included overviews of the Peak Oil concept, the geopolitical consequendces of America's addiction to oil, sustainable local food production or permaculture, and energy efficient transportation and housing.

The most memorable statistic that sticks in my mind comes from Charles Komanoff's presentation advocating for a carbon tax: Americans put forth as much carbon dioxide in a day as everyone else on the planet puts out in a week. Ouch.