Center for Sustainable Urban Environments
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
A Documentary Film
Friday, January 9, 2009
11:00 AM
3200 Recreation Center
When Cuba lost access to Soviet oil in the early 1990s, the country faced an immediate crisis – feeding the population – and an ongoing challenge: how to create a new low-energy society. Cuba transitioned from large, fossil-fuel intensive farming to small, less energy-intensive organic farms and urban gardens, and from a highly industrial society to a more sustainable one. This film tells the story of the Cuban people’s hardship, ingenuity and triumph over sudden adversity – through cooperation, conservation and community, told in their own words.
The Center for Sustainable Urban Environments (http://www.eng.uc.edu/sue/) sponsors these free seminars for the University and Cincinnati communities.
For directions and parking, see http://www.uc.edu/visitors/
All are invited to TAZA afterward for continued discussion, coffee, and a quick bite to eat (http://www.taza.cc)
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The Cuban people have maintained the same life expectancy and infant mortality as the U.S. during this entire difficult period of change. Their government maintained free healthcare and education through it all. They use about a tenth of the energy as a typical person in the U.S. and I'd venture they are happier now than before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteWhy not here, in the U.S., in Cincinnati? We (including me, yes) so blindly trust in technological solutions and have come to believe that anything less must be inferior. The *social will* to work with Nature as a principle, to minimize energy use, is absent from our Government and our market systems. It shouldn't have to be that way.
As was said in the film, in Cuba when they say that society must save energy, and so turn out the lights in rooms you are not using, the people will do it as part of their social compact. Here, we'll complain "why? I am paying for it!"
As always an excellent posting.The
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