Cuba's answer to peak oil

[Amish Country]

The Cuban people have been living with and adapting to the repercussions of the fall of the Soviet Union and the severe lack of petroleum imports for over 20 years now. The following films documents the solutions and adaptations the Cuban people have had to make to survive these realities. It discusses technologies that worked as well as economic and social trends that allowed communities to survive and progress.

Community based solutions:
A short history of peak oil
Surviving peak oil
-Agriculture
---Urban gardens
---Sustainable practices
---Land distribution oil dependency

---Education and health
---Transportation
---housing
---energy alternitives

http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...hl=en&client=safari#docid=2215700774361459528

Low energy life style
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...hl=en&client=safari#docid=4663174070862353171

 

[Farmer]

Re: Cuba's answer to peak oil

Thanks Amish country. very inspiring.

I particularly liked:
-Havana produces 50% of its fruits and vegetables locally via urban agriculture/ permiculture.
-Farmers are now some of the highest paid and most respected of professions!

It seems that for Cuba, being cutoff from oil was a catalyst for rethinking their way of life. It will be interesting to see how people adapt to a (hopefully) more gradual change in other parts of the world.

 

[JJackson]

Re: Cuba's answer to peak oil

Thanks very interesting.

What this shows is that if a severe pandemic comes we should all go to Cuba to wait out the supply chain collapse.
The problem with the Cuban model is it is a response on too short a time scale for the post Hubbard's Peak problem and too long a model for pandemic preparedness. The coming energy crisis in the fossil fuel / fusion gap will be due to a more gradual but sustained climb in energy costs as the large remaining reserves become increasingly costly to extract and process. Cuba is poor model as the problem was non transferable, due to their political structure, where the west will be able to export the shortages in the short term by out bidding the developing world and then the rich will out bid the poor withing each society. The poor should certainly start looking at learning to grow more of their own basic food stuffs. We should all be watching ITER very closely, and praying, the costs of the social unrest in wars and famines could be very high.

 

[Amish Country]

Re: Cuba's answer to peak oil

I particularly liked:
-Havana produces 50% of its fruits and vegetables locally via urban agriculture/ permiculture.-Farmers are now some of the highest paid and most respected of professions!
It seems that for Cuba, being cutoff from oil was a catalyst for rethinking their way of life. It will be interesting to see how people adapt to a (hopefully) more gradual change in other parts of the world.

Agreed. At first I wondered if the %50 was propoganda but remembered that during WWII the US was able to raise a little over 40% using similar methods.

Thanks very interesting.

What this shows is that if a severe pandemic comes we should all go to Cuba to wait out the supply chain collapse.
The problem with the Cuban model is it is a response on too short a time scale for the post Hubard's Peak problem and too long a model for pandemic preparedness. The coming energy crisis in the fossil fuel / fusion gap will be due to a more gradual but sustained climb in energy costs as the large remaining reserves become increasingly costly to extract and process. Cuba is poor model as the problem was non transferable, due to their political structure, where the west will be able to export the shortages in the short term by out bidding the developing world and then the rich will out bid the poor withing each society. The poor should certainly start looking at learning to grow more of their own basic food stuffs. We should all be watching ITER very closely, and praying, the costs of the social unrest in wars and famines could be very high.

Pandemic or not I have no desire to move to Cuba. As to the gradual decline in oil availability and equally gradual increase in its price here in the US, I can only hope that you are right. The price of fuel has already shot up to $4.00 USD a gallon once and has now resumed its climb back toward that figure that help put the country into this current recession. If for some unknown reason the price of fuel were to take off again this may not be such a "poor model". People make their own decisions on how to prepare for the future and protect their children's future. I'm thinking about picking up a book on training oxen and enlarging the garden. My next project is raising meat rabbits and the kids have been asking about getting a pig this spring.....

 

[Amish Country]

Re: Cuba's answer to peak oil

An observation hit me this morning. With all the documentary's film footage of Cuba; city, suburbs and country I don't remember seeing a single dog or cat, on a leash or otherwise. Not even a stray. There were plenty of utilitarian animals being used for transportation, work, meat and milk but no pets or strays. I don't remember seeing any pigeons or birds in the cities either. It is hard for me to imagine farms without cats and dogs and cities without pigeons.

 

[JJackson]

Re: Cuba's answer to peak oil

My mother is in Cuba on a bird watching holiday at the moment so I will be able to get chapter and verse on the bird life when she returns.

 

[Amish Country]

Re: Cuba's answer to peak oil

My mother is in Cuba on a bird watching holiday at the moment so I will be able to get chapter and verse on the bird life when she returns.

I hope that she sees birds more than pigeons on her trip and returns home safely.

 

[Emily]

Re: Cuba's answer to peak oil

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/117/
?The Depression has Changed People?s Outlook?: The Beuschers Remember the Great Depression in Dubuque, Iowa
by David Shannon

"Before the Great Depression of the 1930?s the Beuschers?he was a sixty-two-year-old railroad worker; she was the mother of their eleven children?had been fairly prosperous: they owned their home and had several life-insurance policies serving as savings. But by the time the Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviewed them in 1937, their lives had dramatically changed: the father had lost his railroad job and the mother was taking in sewing. This interview summary, published by the WPA, showed how they struggled to make ends meet during The Great Depression."
.....
"The family?s garden, for which the city furnished some of the seeds and the plot of ground on the city island, added fresh vegetables to the list of staples which alone could be purchased on the grocery orders; there were even some vegetables to be sold from house to house, and Mrs. Beuscher canned a little almost every day, just as the vegetables were ready for use. One summer she put up 500 quarts of vegetables. The family had never had a garden before 1932, both because there was little space and because they had ?never thought of it,? but Mr. Beuscher has continued to garden even now that he is back at work. Since the island garden plot could be reached only by boat, transportation was something of a problem, solved when Mr. Beuscher and three of his neighbors chipped in $2 apiece for the materials from which they built a jointly-owned boat. Only infrequently did two or more families set out to work in their gardens at the same time; so they were forever having to halloo across the water to ask that the boat be brought back to the town side to pick up more gardeners.

Grocery orders were supplemented with surplus commodities. The only other outside assistance which the family received was a sack of seed potatoes for Mr. Beuscher?s garden planting in the spring of 1932 and several tons of coal during the winter of 1933?34 from a private charitable organization to which the Beuschers had in previous years contributed with the thought that they were ?giving something away;? now they consider these contributions the ?best investment they ever made;? they have been?repaid a hundred-fold.?

Although the Beuschers never felt comfortable about receiving relief, it came to be more or less an accepted thing. ?You know, you went down to City Hall, and had to wait in line, and you saw all your friends; it was funny in a way, though it was pitiful, too... People went down to the relief office, and talked about going, just the way they might have gone anywhere else.?"

Washington State hit 35% unemployment during the last Depression.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=all&CISOBOX1=hooverville&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOROOT=all&x=37&y=16&CISOSTART=1,1