Cuba’s transition from a peak- to a post-petroleum world

Excerpts from “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived the Peak Oil Crisis”

Cuba’s "Special Period" was an economic depression that began in 1991 after the collapse of Cuba's primary sponsor, the USSR. The depression peaked by the mid-1990s and decreased in severity by the end of the decade. Cuba also experienced an energy famine when oil imports dropped from 13 to 4 million barrels per year. Thus, Cuba was the first country to face the peak oil crisis, even though it was an artificial peak. This crisis transformed Cuba's society and economy, as exemplified by the Cuban governments change of its 30-year motto from "Socialism or Death" to "A Better World is Possible", and led to the nationwide adoption of sustainable agriculture. Cuba's successful transition from a peak- to a post-petroleum world teaches us many lessons that will be useful when our own countries are forced to make this transition in the near future.

Because most of Cuba's electricity was produced by burning oil, the oil shortage led to widespread blackouts. People could no longer rely on refrigerators, so their only option was to eat fresh food when it was available. Food shortages became the first problem to develop during the Special Period. To understand why, it helps to know that Americans consume 10 barrels of oil per year producing food, 9 on autos, and 7 on houses. Food shortages were exacerbated by an intensification of the U.S. embargo, which led to an 80% decrease in food imports. After the Green Revolution Cuba's agricultural system was the most heavily industrialized in Latin America, but the oil shortage meant that they couldn't use energy-hungry tractors or combine harvesters or transport the food great distances to consumers. Thus, farmers had to completely transform the agricultural system by relocalizing it and changing farming methods from those of industrial agriculture to permaculture. Society became more decentralized as people moved from cities to farms. People became more self-sufficient as they learned to produce their own food. This took 3-5 years, during which there were constant food shortages, and Cubans lost an average of 20 pounds. Government food distributions & rationing kept people from starving.

But Cuba had some advantages: it had 2% of the population of Latin America but 11% of the scientists. Prior to the Special Period scientists had conducted research on sustainable organic farming, and once the need arose they implemented these methods nationwide. It took 3-5 years to make damaged soils fertile and productive again through systematic application of green manure (plowing green matter in) and compost and use of crop rotation. Nationwide farmers decreased oil-derived pesticide use from 21,000 tons to only 1,000 tons per year by using crop-interplanting methods and biopesticides. Now 80% of the food produced in Cuba is organic. The Cuban diet has changed in response: it is now more vegan-like, with greatly decreased consumption of meat, sugar and dairy products and increased fiber content.

The urban agricultural movement was also effective. It started as a survivalist response on the part of individuals, but grew when entire communities began to convert idle neighborhood plots of land to community gardens. These communities used permaculture methods to create natural gardens on roofs and patios. Each neighborhood has a kiosk to sell fruits and vegetables.

The impact of Peak Oil during the Special Period extended far beyond agriculture. To be politically independent Cuba had to be economically independent, which in turn required energy independence. Cuba now uses its own crude oil (which unfortunately is dirty and bad for the environment) and biomass to produce electricity, and Cubans now use one-eighth of the amount of energy that Americans use. Cubans now would rather sell their oil than use it.

The collapse of the economy meant that money became worthless, and people were forced to switch to alternative currency systems such as bartering. People had to abandon their cars. In small towns people turned to horses for transportation. For transportation over short distances city dwellers could walk or use bicycles. For longer distances Cuba had to develop a mass transit system overnight. Even now mass transportation in cities is inadequate, so the current trend is to build mixed-use communities that are self-reliant because all amenities are local.

Increased exercise and a switch to a healthier diet of fresh vegetables caused the health of Cubans to improve. Health care became decentralized, with doctors and nurses living in the same neighborhoods as their patients and paying house calls. Universities decreased in size but increased in number so they could serve local populations.

The people of Cuba demonstrated impressive resilience during the Special Period. They were forced to live with less and to change their way of thinking and way of life, but they successfully adapted, and are still happy. Cubans survived despite their government's planned economy; perhaps during "long emergencies" such as the Special Period it doesn't matter what form of government you have as much as how resilient communities are.

For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period and the video "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived the Peak Oil Crisis"

Solar Cookers for Haiti

I recently purchased a panel reflector solar cooker for $130. The HotPot was designed and developed by Solar Household Energy (www.she-inc.org) and is manufactured by Integrated Logistics Solutions (www.ils.com.mx) in Monterrey, Mexico. Its design uses simple scientific principles. The reflector focuses sunlight on a black pot containing food. The pot is enclosed in a transparent glass "greenhouse" that traps the heat absorbed by the black pot. The HotPot is excellent for slow-cooking vegetables, rice, legumes, and fish (and meat for my wife). Twice per week I buy locally grown organic produce at the Farmers Market, come home, cut it up, and toss it in the HotPot. It can cook up to 9 pounds of most foods within 3 to 4 hours. Preparation usually takes no more than 15 minutes of cutting and tossing into the pot. No liquids need to be added except for rice and beans because water is "sweated" out of the food. Cooking is even easier; I just set it outside facing the sun, and then rotate it twice to track the sun across the sky. Afterward I simply fold up the reflector, wash the black pot, and store them with the glass pot. Solar cooking requires no fossil fuel energy, is good for the environment, and requires minimal cleanup. In addition, the dishes I prepare are healthy and are excellent as leftovers.

Solar cookers can help solve two of the biggest problems in Haiti, deforestation and lack of clean water. Deforestation primarily results from poor people chopping down trees to make charcoal to fuel their stoves. Women often spend many hours every day collecting wood to make charcoal. A simple solution is to provide solar cookers with instructions to the women in each household. Haiti has abundant sunshine, and to become sustainable the Haitian people need to make use of this valuable, free resource. Solar cookers eliminate the need to cut down trees for charcoal. The time saved could be used by women and girls to improve the situation, perhaps through education. An additional benefit is that solar cookers can be used to effectively pasteurize water, thereby preventing water-borne diseases. Solar cookers are an extremely cost-effective solution to the problems of deforestation and water contamination. Solar Cookers International (http://www.solarcookers.org/) has an aid program to distribute solar CooKits, pots and Water Pasteurization Indicators (WAPIs) in Haiti. This is an example of high-impact philanthropy, meaning charitable donations are used to maximize benefits by leveraging existing resources.

The Simpleton’s Guide to Sustainability

From general to specific. Items in lists within good cells improve to the left from good to better to best. Any suggestions for additions or deletions?

Bad	Good
Destroy	Preserve
Dependent	Self-sufficient
Ignorance	Knowledge
Opinion	Fact
Waste	Conserve (reduce, reuse, recycle)
Spending	Saving
Consuming	Producing
Fat	Thin
Monoculture	Polyculture
Deficit	Surplus
Hidden costs	Triple bottom line accounting
Disposable	Reusable, recyclable, biodegradable
Noisy	Quiet
Polluting	Clean
Toxic	Benign
Clear-cutting	Selective harvesting
Coal	Solar and wind energy
Personal Automobiles	Public transportation
Beef	Soybeans, farm-raised herbivorous fish
Escalators, elevators	Stairs
Jet-ski	kayak or canoe
Powerboat	Sailboat
Snowmobile	Snowshoes
Downhill skiing	Cross-country skiing
Recreational vehicles	Tents and Cottages
Industrial agriculture	Organic Community Supported Agriculture
Using a treadmill	Walking outside
Driving	Running or bicycling
Travel for meetings	Videoconferencing
Daily commute to work	Telecommuting

Cutting government services doesn’t always save money

People are familiar with the concept that cutting corners often ends up costing more money in the long run: this applies to homes, cars, nearly every consumer purchase. But the same holds true with government services, which we purchase with our tax dollars. Many want the cheapest government possible, so the trend in the past few decades has been towards decreasing taxes. That trend combined with the recession beginning in 2008 has led to drastic cuts in government services. Those cuts, however, often lead to problems that cost money to remedy. One of many examples is the problem of violent patients in emergency rooms (Julie Carr Smyth, AP, 8/11/2010). Cash-strapped states have closed state hospitals and addiction programs and cut mental health jobs. As a result, ER visits for drug- and alcohol-related incidents increased from ~1.6 to ~2 million between 2005-8, and incidents of violence in ER rooms jumped from 16,277 to 21,406 between 2006-8. In response, hospitals have had to pay for expensive deterrents such as 24-hour guards, bulletproof glass, installation of "panic buttons", coded ID badges and scanners, and metal detectors. From a sustainability perspective, it makes more sense to invest in prevention of substance abuse and mental illness than in security systems to protect people from addicts and the mentally ill. Treatment and prevention increase social capital and may increase economic capital through cost savings; security and deterrence systems do not increase any form of capital.

Globalization and culture

Much of the backlash against globalization stems from a fear that it will lead to a homogenization of culture. This process has operated throughout history, but electronic media and global transportation have accelerated the process because they have removed barriers to the exchange of information. Without barriers, random processes cause the entropy of the global social system to increase, eventually leading to homogenization. It's like the classic experiment that explains entropy and diffusion. Divide a box into two chambers and fill each with a different gas. When you remove the divider, Gas A molecules begin to diffuse into the Gas B chamber, and vice-versa. The entropy, or disorder, of the system increases as the two chambers change composition from pure gas to increasingly similar mixtures of A and B molecules. When the process is complete, the two chambers have the same compositions. Both entropy and stability are at their maximum values.

Likewise, geographic and communication barriers have historically divided world cultures. A diverse array of cultures developed in isolation, which led to decreased stability and increased conflicts. The modern removal of communication barriers inevitably reversed the process of cultural divergence by increasing the efficiency of information exchange and removing cultural obstructions. Theoretically, the subsequent cultural 'blending' will ultimately (over long periods of time) lead to cultural homogenization and societal stability, but in the short term the process can be disruptive and painful. However, the force driving this process is relentless, so stopping the process would be difficult or impossible, and undesirable since it leads to an increase in stability. As long as humanity has affordable global travel and digital communication, fighting against cultural homogenization on a global scale would be futile. The only way to slow or prevent it is to slow or stop the exchange of information, which is neither desirable nor acceptable.

Just as a homogeneous mixture of two gases is more stable than the segregated pure gases, cultural homogeneity should encourage stability. Removal of cultural differences and barriers increases understanding, which decreases fear and hatred, which increases stability. However, we also previously argued that decreased diversity leads to decreased resilience. A system is most resilient when diversity is at a maximum. For example, ecosystems with high biodiversity are more resilient than those with low biodiversity. In a farm or garden, a polyculture is more resilient than a monoculture. Reasoning by analogy, high cultural diversity corresponds to greater resilience. Cultural diversity makes it more likely that society will find solutions in the face of global threats such as global warming. In the past, some cultures were better prepared to deal with adversity, while other less adept civilizations collapsed. For example, in contrast to the Easter Islanders who practiced unsustainable logging practices until no trees remained, Japanese leaders successfully dealt with timber shortages in the mid-17th century. They invoked Confucian principles of limiting consumption and accumulating reserve supplies to develop sustainable forest management (Diamond 2005). In our global society, one culture may provide the seed of knowledge or understanding that will lead to the preservation of global civilization. What if that culture were wiped out during cultural homogenization? Global homogenization of culture would decrease the resilience of humanity.

Therefore, sustainability requires stability and diversity. We must maximize the two at different spatial scales. A community containing people with similar cultures and beliefs can be stable; a country containing diverse communities can be resilient if those communities respect each other’s differences. To promote sustainability, society should adopt policies that reduce intracommunity diversity and increase intercommunity diversity. For example, many cities in the northeast like Buffalo, where I grew up, have multiple ethnic neighborhoods (Polish, Italian, and Irish in Buffalo), and these neighborhoods have coexisted peacefully for more than one hundred years.

Simple Science is Sometimes the Best Science

Many people think that important science always involves sophisticated mathematics, high-powered supercomputers, or expensive technical instruments. A recent book demonstrates that this is not always the case. David MacKay, Professor of Physics at Cambridge University, published a very influential book in 2009 titled "Sustainable Energy: Without the hot air", available for free download at http://www.withouthotair.com/. A review in Physics World stated it is 'a book every budding physicist should read - and perhaps also ... the one every working physicist would like to have written.' This book has probably had a greater impact on science and society than any other scientific publication in the last couple of years, but it involves physics no more complicated than application of Newton's laws of motion. MacKay uses data, logic, and simple math to arrive at important conclusions. He systematically calculates the maximum amounts of energy that can be produced by renewable energy sources in Britain and shows that it is not physically possible to meet Britain's energy needs using renewable energy alone. This conclusion is very important, but MacKay also shows why some forms of renewable energy such as solar are much more promising than others such as biofuels. His conclusions will help determine where future scientific research funds will be funneled and therefore what path research on renewable energy will take. Though the science MacKay used is simple, the conclusions are important enough that he was appointed as the chief scientific advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change shortly after the book was published. Britain is now conducting studies to decide whether to support large-scale deployment of tidal power, the form of renewable energy that MacKay most strongly endorsed for Britain in his book.

The enormous impact of MacKay's book may help dispel some misconceptions about science. Important science doesn't need to be expensive or complicated, and sometimes it is published in books rather than scientific journals (remember "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin and "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" by Isaac Newton?). Society needs clear-headed thinkers like David MacKay to show us how to address some of the pressing scientific problems of our time such as global climate change and peak oil. And the general public can learn a lot about the future of society by reading MacKay’s book.

Economic growth can be too fast, leading to attacks against children in China

Change as rapid as China is experiencing is destabilizing. Imagine you are Chinese peasant whose lifestyle does not change while everything changes around you. Your friends who became wealthy will no longer be friends with you; the girl you hoped to marry now spurns you because her family is now wealthy. The landmarks you grew up with have been torn down and replaced with modern buildings. You feel alienated and disempowered. What do you do? Perhaps these changes can explain the strange rash of copycat crimes in China that started in March 2010, when a man stabbed eight children to death while they waited for a bus outside their elementary school in the southeastern city of Nanping. At his trial the man said he was angry because he was jilted by a woman and treated badly by her wealthy family. On April 28 he was put to death, and on the same day the second attack occurred: a man in the southern city of Leizhou wounded 15 students and a teacher in a knife attack. The third attack occurred the next day in the eastern city of Taixing when a man slashed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard with an 8 inch knife. The following day a fourth attack occurred in Beijing, where a farmer attacked kindergarten students with a hammer, then burned himself to death.

According to experts, "outbursts against the defenseless are frequently due to social pressures... and growing feelings of social injustice in the fast-changing country. An avowedly egalitarian society only a generation ago, China's headlong rush to prosperity has sharpened differences between haves and have-nots (Bodeen, AP, 4/29/2010)". Change can be too fast for systems and people to adapt; even seemingly positive change like rapid economic growth is unsustainable because it is destabilizing and causes social upheaval.