Americans are getting goose bumps just thinking about the coming winter, with heating oil prices 75 percent higher today than they were a year ago and natural gas not much better. There’s a growing — and justified — concern in Congress and in state government that a real crisis is brewing, in which people will be forced to choose between not eating or freezing to death.

Some politicians are clamoring for government to provide more aid for needy people to heat their homes, through programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. And there’s a bill in the U.S. Senate that would require the release of oil from the 2-million-barrel Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve if prices don’t drop below $4 per gallon. While these aren’t bad ideas, it would make far more sense to help people who otherwise can’t afford it take steps now so they’ll use less fuel next winter than they traditionally have.

Steps like insulating your house, replacing drafty windows with energy-efficient ones, replacing inefficient boilers and even weather-stripping can reduce energy consumption dramatically overnight. Giving more money to programs that promote energy efficiency — such as those administered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority — will get more bang for the government’s buck than simply subsidizing people’s heating bills.

Help someone reduce the number of gallons of oil be burns by one-third, and it won’t sting nearly as much when the price of a gallon goes up by one-half.

While these improvements take time and tend to be expensive, the higher energy costs go, the quicker they’ll pay for themselves. Waiting for the emergency to strike, and responding by giving people with inefficient homes more money to send up their chimneys is hardly a smart way to proceed.