There are some wonderful thoughts on what can be done 'at home' to boost your family's sustainability.  It does, however, remind me of the "Pioneer House" kind of shows, which pitted a few folks in separate homes against each other, to see 'who would make it, and who wouldn't'.

  I only skimmed the article, but I don't suspect that the author is not also aware that our ability to keep our lives going will have to work with neighbors combining their effort on many of these projects, and get the benefit of some economy-of-scale  (ie, 'barnraising') to make a self-sufficient approach somewhat managable.

  She mentions the 'salt' question, for example.  I can't look at our prospects, even if we have to reinvent great swaths of our suburban lives, without knowing that there will be people on the coast who will be producing salt, and it will be sold at markets, in towns, and where he'll buy some of her neighborhood's Maple Syrup or Honey.  Trading and some specialization are not a product of Crude Oil, and will not be peaking with it.

As I've suggested before, people who live in urban and suburban areas who are serious about this should find a copy of The Integral Urban House: Self-reliant Living in the City, ISBN 0-87156-213-8.  To get a flavor of what the book is about do a search for the "integral urban house" because The Mother Earth News has a couple of articles in its archive (I don't have the complete URLs handy) about it.

I have to say it really warms my heart when people make an attempt to become even partly self-sufficient.  There's just so much personal reward from it.