The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

[jpak]

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657

Havana, Cuba -- At the Organipónico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers' collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restaurant. Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.

<snip>

This need to bring agriculture into the city began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds.

<snip>

So Cubans started to grow local organic produce out of necessity, developed bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers as petrochemical substitutes, and incorporated more fruits and vegetables into their diets. Since they couldn't fuel their aging cars, they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.

<snip>

The solutions to Cuba's energy problems were not easy. Without money, it couldn't invest in nuclear power and new conventional fossil fuel plants or even large-scale wind and solar energy systems. Instead, the country focused on reducing energy consumption and implementing small-scale renewable energy projects.

<much more>

[murray hill farm]

1. Cuba is a beautiful and wonderful country.

Even now, if you do drive a car..and you see people standing on the side of the road...usually 10 or 15 of them..who need a ride, you are required to stop and give as many as possible a ride.

[jpak]

2. This is one of the most remarkable things I've read in a long time

and a cautionary tale for the US in the all-too-near future...

[wake.up.america]

3. Save energy, create friendships through cooperative efforts. Put a smile..

on your face. Let the greedy ones wallow in their degenerate behavior

[mom cat]

4. Why, that is so unamerican ...smiles?

:sarcasm: of course. We all need to learn how to do this and the sooner the better.

[murray hill farm]

5. A few other Cuban nice things.

The farms are beautiful...most do not have electricity, but they are amazing long green fields..all imaculate..when i first saw them, i thought of the Amish farms in the usa. All of Cuba is clean..u never see trash along the roads...and the people are amazingly friendly and happy looking..wherever u go. The literacy rate in Cuba is 100% and all education is free..all medical care is free. Wonderful dance and arts are everywhere..and all provided free..even the training and dance schools and art schools are free. The old mansions in Havana..lots of them..that used to belong to the wealthy cubans..who fled to live in Miami long ago..now belong to the people. They are maintained...and each family is given a certain time each year when they can go and stay free..used the pools, etc...as just a free vacation...everyone has the opportunity to do this. It is an amazing place...but u would never know it by what we have all been led to believe in the USA

[roody]

6. Well I would love to go see for myself,

but my government won't let me!

[jpak]

7. Just think how much better things would be

if we normalized relations and ended the embargo.

[murray hill farm]

8. It can be done.

Fly to Cancun...and in the middle of your stay there...u dont want to go directly from flt from usa to flt to cuba...or from flt from Cuba directly to your flt to usa...but in the middle of your trip...u can take a 3 day flt to Cuba..and rt cost is only about $100 usd..when u fly from mexico into cuba, they do not stamp your passport..and there is no record that u have been there.

[blindpig]

22. Re: rides

Only vehicles with state tags are required to stop for riders. While this is the majority of vehicles on the road those with private tags are not required. Those with state tags are owned by state enterprises, usually work trucks, and will load people into the back, dropping them off at junctions on the main road.

You're right about the beauty, Pindar del Rio is a picture of pastoral splendor surpassing the Shenandoah Valley.

edited for spelling

[NNadir]

9. And of course, Castro is a wonderful thing too.

One has to remark on a country that keeps the same ruler in power for 45 years.

I wonder if that is another wonderful piece we should emulate from the Cuban nirvana?

He must be a wonderful man, that Castro, to have been re-elected so many times. Of course it helps if your opposition leaves by sea in rickety boats at great risk to their lives by the hundreds of thousands. Emigration is a wonderful way to conserve energy.

Before Night Falls: http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/stafflag/reinaldoarenas.html

[jpak]

10. Yes, and if Batista and Mob still ran the place

they might have themselves a nucular power plant...

:rofl:

[NNadir]

11. Whatever. The reactors at Juragua did not involve Battista.

I also note that Castro asked to bring nuclear weapons into his country. That is an unusal position for a great anti-nuclear hero of the socialist working people's struggle against fascism.

Only the pleading by the United States, through intermediaries, prevented the great socialist hero from building a graphite type RMBK reactor on Cuban soil. Instead our great hero Fidel, savior of the working people, sought to build two VWER Soviet reactors at Juragua.

I guess that they never heard of these reactors in the anti-nuclear camp, but I do recognize that the anti-nuclear camp is mostly notable for what it doesn't know.

Here is a description of the great socialist heroic people's struggle reactors that Battista didn't build:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/cuba/safety.html

http://www.insc.anl.gov/neisb/neisb4/NEISB_1.1.html


I note that if Cuba built a nuclear fuel recycling plant, lot's of confused people would be running around saying that it is a police state, just as they report Japan to be a police state. But since Cuba has yet to build such a plant to go with the reactors at Juragua, I guess the contention is that it is not a police state, but instead is a wonderful state of peak oil management, a conservationist nirvana.

It's also wonderful how they manage AIDS in Cuba:

http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/stafflag/reinaldoarenas.html

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NNadir]

13. Well at least the anti-nuclear squad knows about them after they are

informed.

This is a huge surprise, since the anti-nuclear movement seems largely capable of repeating dogma and is usually incapable of understanding any information given it.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the anti-nuclear people's anti-fascist socialist working people's agricultural collective movement knows shit, of course.

This is after all a squad of people who think that they can say "Bastista" and "nuclear" in the same sentence and make sense. These are people who continually are unable to learn the basics of logic, like this precept: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html

Of course, this logical fallacy really doesn't apply, since the "association" managed by the anti-capitalist league of the people's collective for the revolutionary struggle to harvest sugar cane, is, at best, a stretch.

Here is how I understand the (very dubious) logic of this argument to go:

1) A post is offered on the wonderful way the Cuban people have moved past oil.

2) Someone implies, "Well gee, Cuba's experience only applies to authoritarian states."

3) Someone else implies (irrelevant to the entire argument) that the authoritarian in question replaced an authoritarian, adding an absurd contention, that the first authoritarian was more likely to build nuclear power plant, because he was connected with the mob.

4) The second person points out that the first person actually attempted to build a nuclear plant, two of them in fact, but was prevented because, after 45 years of autocratic rule, his country is still too poor to build modern plants.

5) The first party repeats the nonexistent link to the word "nuclear" to the authoritarian replaced by the socialist hero authoritarian.

:eyes:

Whatever. It is very clear that the only nuclear activities ever conducted in Cuba - and mind you I don't oppose the completion of the Juaragua plants - came at the behest of the great socialist anti-imperialist revolutionary people's republic of the glorious worker's struggle for the victory against the capitalist ruling class dictatorship of the Doleist counter-revolutionary corporatists.

The logic of the arguments here are really not worth pursuing. For my money, there just more typical disordered and dogmatic thinking of the type I see all the time.

By the way the carbon intensity of Cuba in 2003 a huge 4.85 tons of carbon dioxide for each $1000 of GDP (2000 US): http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1gco2.xls It is 16 times higher than the carbon intensity of France. Completing the Juaragua plants might help stem this environmental disaster.

If the entire planet adopted Cuba's strategy of releasing almost 5 tons of carbon dioxide for each $1000 we produce, we'd all die from carbon dioxide within a few weeks.

[jpak]

14. The old hy-sterical fallacious Ad Hominem attack

and *yawn*...

:rofl:

[NNadir]

15. I simply point out Cuba's abysmal carbon efficiency, almost the worst in

the hemisphere.

One may yawn because one doesn't understand numbers, but this, of course not really unusual. Many people fall asleep when exposed to concepts they can't understand.

I have no doubt that Cuba represents the case of what renewable magical thinking will bring in many places, carbon dioxide disaster.

Again here are the numbers for Cuba's carbon efficiency: 4.85 metric tons of carbon dioxide for each $1000 (US 2000) of economic activity. In all of Central and South America, only the Netherlands Antillies does worse. Even Haiti does better, coming in at 1/10th of Cuba's figure.

In case anyone couldn't find the numbers the last time I linked them, here's the link again: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1gco2.xls Because I do realize that to buy into the renewable fantasy, one has to have a poor appreciation of numbers, I will advise that in this table, lower numbers are to be preferred to higher numbers.

Again, I find it wholly unsurprising that the "renewables will save us" crowd offers us Cuba as a paradigm of what they are after. I don't doubt it at all. Cuba, after all, is a country obsessed with dogma and remains, as a result, impoverished. It's government is one that will stab itself - and more chillingly, it's people - in the eye in search of ideological purity. After all if the notion that renewables can address the international crisis of global climate change is anything at all, it is denial.

QED. (Again.)

In an effort, albeit a doomed effort, to improve the poor thinking of my antagonists, I will try to help them out, by offering a morally and technically better paradigm for a country that does well with renewable energy. My antagonists, flailing after the state of affairs that indicates that the renewable fantasy has been a failure for more than half a century, are looking for a Central American country that does well with renewable energy. Allow me to suggest Costa Rica, whose former President, Oscar Arias Sanchez, has recently returned to office after a long retirement. (He is a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work in ending the war in Nicaragua.)

Costa Rica really does use significant renewable energy: It is exploiting it's geothermal resources actively. The carbon intensity of the country is an impressive 0.31 tons/$1000 GDP. It has no nuclear power plants, and doesn't need any since the entire country uses less than an exajoule of energy. In many ways it's the Norway of Latin America, a country that can succeed at producing excellent carbon efficiency without using nuclear power.

I am, of course, unsurprised that people who confuse nuclear fuel recycling with fascism, totalitarianism etc are completely unfamiliar with what any of those things actually are, but I can tell you that Costa Rica, as opposed to Cuba, is a negative example of oppression. Costa Rica has democratic traditions dating to the 19th century, and disbanded its military in the 1940's.

No one can object to a country that disbands its military and does so without external prompting.

Costa Rica is also a renewable paradise. Most of its energy comes from sugar cane waste, geothermal energy, etc. Here is a very nice report on the development of geothermal energy in Costa Rica: http://iga.igg.cnr.it/pdf/WGC/2000/R0160.PDF

Here is some brief googled commentary on Costa Rica and renewable energy: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0703-03.htm

If one really wanted to exhibit clear thinking, and argue that there are places where renewable energy actually works, one could certainly suggest Costa Rica. I think they have pretty enlightened energy policies there, although of course, they have certain resources that are not available to everyone, notably geothermal fields.

I have long admired Costa Rica. Here is a country where the orderly transition of power takes place regularly. No one has ever ruled Costa Rica for 45 years. It is a highly civilized nation with highly civilized traditions and culture.

This is slightly off topic, and unrelated to the question of energy - energy being a matter more of technology than of politics - but I feel compelled to state it anyway. A real revolutionary is not some one who installs himself or herself as "dictator for life." Robert Mugabe is not a real revolutionary; neither is Fidel Castro. Real revolutionaries who are committed both to their country and to humanity on a larger scale and who in doing so live by the tradition of Cincinnatus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus

Our own George Washington lived by the example of Cincinnatus, and so, most famously, in our own times, did the justly admired - adored really - Nelson Mandela, who has retired in the light of vast, unmatched, internationally acknowledged, prestige and honor that is largely deserved.

Costa Rica, though it is not a major nation, had it's own Cincinnatus in the person of José María ("Don Pepe") Figueres Ferrer, who stepped aside to restore democracy in his country, later being elected to the office he voluntarily left.

I have no idea why Fidel Castro is popular with people on the left, since he is an oppressive freak, as his term of office demonstrates, and as the number of people who die escaping him suggests. (As noted by the carbon efficiency numbers, he is an environmental disaster as well as a political and moral disaster.) His chief claim to fame seems to have been to have chosen to be a pawn of the (then) weaker of two imperialist superpowers. I have no respect for anyone who offers Castro as an example of decency, of justice, or as an agent of change. He's just another in a series of unfortunate dictators in a third world country.

[jpak]

16. What horseshit

Cuba's CO2 emissions have declined by ~2 million tonnes per year since the fall of the Soviet Union.

...and Cuba's CO2 emissions (~34 million tonnes per year) are ~0.6% that of the US and ~0.1% of total global anthropogenic emissions.

They aren't the problem - not by a long shot....

[NNadir]

17. I posted Cuba's carbon efficiency data.

It is possible to reduce carbon emissions by increasing poverty, though, I'll give you that.

That is another point I feel continually compelled to make.

I have always acknowledged that we could in theory reduce carbon emissions by impoverishing everyone. We could also reduce carbon emissions by killing everyone, which is of course, at the end of the day what the renewable fantasy is really about.

Once more I'll link the carbon efficiency figures, noting that the most carbon efficient economy in the world is that of Chad, where life expectancy is less than 50 years for most adults:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1gco2.xls

Every time I post this link, which now is about 2 or 3 times a day, I note that the excel file is sortable. Therefore it is relatively easy for anyone with a modicum of computer literacy to figure out what country does well, and what country does poorly. Chad comes in at 0.12 metric tons of carbon for each $1000 of GDP.

http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?IndicatorID=140&Country=CR


http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html


Cuba's figure is more than 40 times higher, the second worst in the Western Hemisphere, after Netherlands Antilles.

Cuba remains a very poor country, with a per capita income of a few thousand dollars, even after 45 years of continuous revolution although I'm sure anti-capitalist worker's people's struggle dictator of the proletariat El Supremo Fidel lives very well, as well as any capitalist any where. One wonders at this point what member of his family will replace him when he dies, while credulous Westerners drool on their shoes in amoral admiration.

Generalissimo Raul Castro looks like a tired old fart too:





Maybe they have other members of the family who can inherit the throne, I don't know.

Of course, no one knows how things will work out in the great socialist paradise south of Key West. Lieutenant-General Vassily Stalin, a notoriously incompetent drunkard, was in prison only a few months after his criminal father's death.

Costa Rica, about which, as José Figueres Ferrer remarked, had "a deeper and more human revolution than that of Cuba," tripled its GDP since 1960 in real terms, instituted a democracy that is admired by all who know of it, oh, and yeah, reduced it's carbon intensity to the level of France, 0.31 metric tons of carbon dioxide per $1000 of GDP.

Really it's a wonderful country, Costa Rica, a real, if rare, example of renewable energy working on scale. If I were promoting the absurd idea that the world could survive on current renewable technology - and I'm not - I would look to Costa Rica to provide evidence, not Cuba. Cuba, after all, is a dictator's toilet. But I do understand how people can reject my gracious offer to help with their poor thinking.

I'm sure that this appeal to data will produce the usual expletives proving that the opposition simply cannot comprehend what data is, or how to interpret it or what it means. But I already knew that.

:eyes:

[jpak]

18. How 'bout the Butcher's of Tienanmen Square?????

I see the pronuclear crowd absolutely gush when they talk about THEIR nuclear power plants????

Hypocrisy????

:rofl:

[NNadir]

19. Yes.

I am not an admirer of the Chinese government, although I am an admirer of their nuclear reactor program.

Now, if Cuba had a nuclear program, I would applaud that too. I applaud nuclear programs everywhere when they are devoted to energy purposes: Japan, China, France, even the United States, because I know that global climate change is a serious matter.

I, of course, have never been so confused as to represent nuclear power as an issue of fascism, insisting that all countries who use nuclear technology are fascist. Nor do I think that all countries that do not use nuclear power are inhabited by complete dumbells.

I certainly didn't bring the subject of Cuba to this forum. I merely noted that Cuba is a terrible example in all terms of environmental responsibility. It's carbon efficiency sucks. It's people are in dire straights and they have failed to do much better over the last 45 years of dictatorship.

The question in China is somewhat different. Their government is cruel and oppressive. They have few freedoms. But they are raising living standards. China, in case one hasn't noticed, is a growing power. Oh, and it isn't creating this wealth by building 0.00001 exajoules worth of solar cells and crowing about it like it is solving the serious emergency of global climate change.

[jpak]

20. But..but..but there were major safety issues with Cuba's

nucular plants

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/cuba/safety.html

How can anyone applaud this???

How can this be good for the environment????

[NNadir]

21. I am not familiar with the reactors, but usually the risks of reactors are

vastly overstated by people who know very little about them.

No one has been injured by a major failure from a pressurized water reactor. Ever.

The way people talk however, you would think its a regular occurrence.

This is in contrast to the situation with say, coal mines.

People are very mysterious about nuclear things but man, when a coal mine collapses you can't generate any interest - it's just so ordinary.

On this website we have people rail against what they say, with a monumental appeal to fear could, might, possibly will happen in a nuclear plant, with great seriousness, but man, something like this, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=43122&mesg_id=43122 generates nothing whatsoever.

Nothing.

One wonders why it is that the Mexicans are so much less interesting than the Cubans. Aren't these poor people? Don't they speak Spanish?

Man, maybe they should haul the bodies of the coal miners over to the Laguna Verde nuclear power plant and say they were killed by radiation. That would generate some great gnashing of teeth, I bet.

:puke:

Well as I always say, what is telling about the anti-nuclear movement is what they miss rather than what they know, since apparently they know very little and what they should know, they avoid.

I know, of course, that if Cuba finished its reactors - and let's face it - someday they may, we would be hearing from the same people now singing praises of Cuba would be carrying on about Cuban fascism. This is because the anti-nuclear movement is unfocused, illogical, and frankly, unintelligent. It is compelled to appeal to all sorts of irrelevancies, including, repeatedly the argument of "guilt by association."

Actually though nuclear technology does not determine the form of government. Both countries bordering my country, for instance, operate nuclear power plants. I never worry about them invading here because of the "plutonium fascism" that is (as I have heard here :crazy: :crazy:) alleged to effect nations as diverse as France, Japan and China.

I obviously despise the King of Cuba, his family, and his defenders. (I am also supremely amused to find Cuba represented as a country that knows something about how to manage an energy crisis, post "peak oil" - that is hilarious.) But if the King announced that he was going to complete the two VVER reactors he ordered, I would be relieved, because Cuba obviously doesn't have a clue about how to deal with global climate change, and the nuclear plants can only help to bring it in to compliance with world carbon efficiency standards. If humanity is to survive global climate change, which maybe it won't do, than all nations, large and small, must be, in all countries, comparable to those of France, Norway, Switzerland, Japan and Costa Rica, or even better. Global climate change is a serious crisis, involving all human beings. How they get there is not as important as them getting there at all. Cuba, right now, doesn't cut it. It may represent the most serious crisis in human history. Therefore it transcends questions of local politics and political personalities.

Nuclear energy doesn't have to be 100% safe to better than its alternatives. It only needs to be safer than the consequences of global climate change, which it is a priori. The Juragua reactors should be completed, and they should operate, if it can be shown that they are up to international standards. I am not convinced that they are not up to international standards. Most likely, they are. Again, no pressurized water reactor has ever lead to loss of life because of catastrophic failure. None. Zero. Only a few have failed, most famously Three Mile Island, which injured no one. Because the world is so familiar with the highly successful technology of the PWR, we can all help Cuba to operate its reactors in the safe manner that has characterized nearly every nuclear operation in the world.