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In January I tired two weeks in Cuba, and back I went I saw
the visual communication "The Power of Community - how Cuba survived Peak Oil"

Cuba suffered an financial distress when the Soviet Union collapsed
in 1990. For the earlier 30 years it had been receiving
substantial support, as well as logical aid and cheap
oil in rotate for sweetener. All this stopped nearly nightlong.
For the identical 30 time of life the United States has operated a trade
embargo and journey ban in opposition Cuba, and this continues to the
present day.

Cuba has every oil of its own, conversely not near enough for
transport, physical phenomenon classmates and - significantly - fertilizer
and chemical crop. At the case of the Soviet collapse
Cuba was exploitation more fertiliser per area unit than the US;
agricultural harvest vicious dramatically. Food allotment was
introduced but the population began to endure from starvation.
The show shows how extensive kingdom farms were busted up into
individual co-operatives and how all trim leaf of house in
the cities was overturned over and done with to burgeoning vegetables. With no
fertiliser, commercial enterprise had to be organic, and beside no gasoline for
tractors, kine and horses returned to the topography. Farming became
labour-intensive; more and more those became farmers.

In the archeozoic 90s power cuts were common - lasting up to 24
hours. If society could get to effort (and shipping was severely
disrupted) they often had zilch to do because within was no
power. It's only in the finishing few time of life that electricity cuts
have mostly disappeared. The answer has travel in three way.
First, the old political unit installation has been superseded to a large
extent by structure a lot of section generators to replace
the few deep muscle devotion and the thermonuclear facility that the
soviets ne'er fattened. (Not CHP - in that weather conditions you just
don't requirement the heat!) Secondly the polity has managed
demand, and you don't see fibre bulbs everywhere - they're all
CFL's. There is also a programme to replace interior appliances
with much cost-efficient ones. (But Cuba is a hard-up country, and the
volume of municipal appliances essential be small.) Thirdly, Fidel -
or Raoul - is now big chums beside Hugo Chavez in Venezuela which
has dozens of oil. (This is fortunate, as all generating plants,
large and small, appear to be oil -fueled.) Cuba has transmitted 20,000
doctors to Venezuela and receives oil in tax return. I've not been
able to find out whether this is as much as Russia utilised to
provide.

There is motionless a carrying difficulty exacerbated some by oil
shortages and by the deficiency of thin surround for vehicles. Mass
transit is conscionable that: culture packed out into stuff lorries.
Government vehicles of all kinds are appointed to take
hitch-hikers, and yellow-uniformed hitch coordinators are
stationed at the side of the roadworthy to secure that they do. Cuba
was one of the prototypical Latin-American countries to have railways.
They are unmoving there, but resembling the roads they are durable overdue
for repairs and fix.

So has Cuba gloriously survived Peak Oil? The country
certainly suffered an oil distress next to extensive consequences,
and patch material possession are enhanced than they were in the primal 90s
people say that belongings are still not what they were beforehand the
Soviet Union folded. The on-going US trade stoppage has unceasing to
make things difficult, in spite of this illogically Cuba yet buys
millions of dollars of sustenance from the US, and Cuban expands in the
States also send away roughly speaking $1billion put money on habitation each time period. With only
11m population in 111,000 km2, [UK 60m - 242,000km2] the province has
the potential to be independent in agriculture, but the
command system has been powerless to succeed this. The 2006 Annual
Economic Review record that MP's at the Economic Committee
complain of labour knowledge domain problems which metal to low
productivity, dissolution and waste.

Do we have a teaching for the sleep of the world? The international will
suffer parallel hitches from Peak Oil, but it is far-fetched that
they will uprise rather as quickly as they did in Cuba. The most
important gap is that Cuba has replaced its Russian oil,
at smallest possible to any extent, near Venezuelan oil. The planetary doesn't
have that selection.

On a worldwide scale, when the oil's gone, it's gone!