How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. Could the U.S. be next? New Documentary.

[Guest guest]

A new Documentary just out.

 

Source > http://www.communitysolution.org/cuba.html

 

 

The documentary, " The Power of Community – How Cuba

Survived Peak Oil, " was inspired when Faith Morgan and

Pat Murphy took a trip to Cuba through Global Exchange

in August, 2003. That year Pat had begun studying and

speaking about worldwide peak oil production. In May

Pat and Faith attended the second meeting of The

Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, a

European group of oil geologists and scientists, which

predicted that mankind was perilously close to having

used up half of the world's oil resources. When they

learned that Cuba underwent the loss of over half of

its oil imports and survived, after the fall of the

Soviet Union in 1990, the couple wanted to see for

themselves how Cuba had done this.

 

During their first trip to Cuba, in the summer of

2003, they traveled from Havana to Trinidad and

through several other towns on their way back to

Havana. They found what Cubans call " The Special

Period " astounding and Cuban's responses very moving.

Faith found herself wanting to document on film Cuba's

successes so that what they had done wouldn't be lost.

Both of them wanted to learn more about Cuba's

transition from large farms or plantations and

reliance on fossil-fuel-based pesticides and

fertilizers, to small organic farms and urban gardens.

Cuba was undergoing a transition from a highly

industrial society to a sustainable one.

 

Cuba became, for them, a living example of how a

country can successfully traverse what we all will

have to deal with sooner or later, the reduction and

loss of finite fossil fuel resources. In the fall of

2003 Pat and Faith had the opportunity to return to

Cuba to study its agriculture. It was a wonderful

trip. They saw much of the island, met many farmers

and urban gardeners, scientists and engineers –

traveling more than 1700 miles, from one end of Cuba

to the other. It was all they had hoped for and more.

 

In 2004 Community Service, Inc. (CSI) began raising

money and organizing a third trip (October), to film

in Cuba. Greg Green, cinematographer, director and

editor of The End of Suburbia documentary, was the

chief videographer. Faith Morgan shot the second

camera, John Morgan did still photography and Megan

Quinn, Outreach Director of CSI, was sound director.

After their return from Cuba, they secured assistance

and direction from Tom Blessing IV, producer, and Eric

Johnson, post-production supervisor and editor.

Together, they bring over 40 years combined experience

in film and television production.

 

The goals of this film are to give hope to the

developed world as it wakes up to the consequences of

being hooked on oil, and to lift American's prejudice

of Cuba by showing the Cuban people as they are. The

filmmakers do this by having the people tell their

story on film. It's a story of their dedication to

independence and triumph over adversity, and a story

of cooperation and hope. Several Cubans expressed the

belief that living on an island, with its natural

boundaries, breeds awareness that there are limits to

natural recourses.

 

Everyone who has worked on the documentary hopes that,

seeing this film, people will also see the world on

which we live, as another, much larger, island.