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The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil
By Megan Quinn
Permaculture Activist
Published on Sunday, February 26, 2006
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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.
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| Farmers at the Organiponico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project in downtown Havana, weed the beds. (Photo by John Morgan) |
In other Havana neighborhoods, lacking enough land for such large projects, residents have installed raised garden beds on parking lots and planted vegetable gardens on their patios and rooftops.
Since the early 1990s, an urban agriculture movement has swept through Cuba, putting this capital city of 2.2 million on a path toward sustainability.
A small group of Australians assisted in this grass-roots effort, coming to this Caribbean island nation in 1993 to teach permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture which uses far less energy.
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.
"In reality, when this all began, it was a necessity. People had to start cultivating vegetables wherever they could," a tour guide told a documentary crew filming in Cuba in 2004 to record how Cuba survived on far less oil than usual.
The crew included the staff of The Community Solution, a non-profit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio which teaches about peak oil - the time when oil production world-wide will reach an all-time high and head into an irreversible decline. Some oil analysts believe this may happen within this decade, making Cuba a role model to follow.
"We wanted to see if we could capture what it is in the Cuban people and the Cuban culture that allowed them to go through this very difficult time," said Pat Murphy, The Community Solution's executive director. "Cuba has a lot to show the world in how to deal with energy adversity."
Scarce petroleum supplies have not only transformed Cuba's agriculture. The nation has also moved toward small-scale renewable energy and developed an energy-saving mass transit system, while maintaining its government-provided health care system whose preventive, locally-based approach to medicine conserves scarce resources.
The era in Cuba following the Soviet collapse is known to Cubans as the Special Period. Cuba lost 80 percent of its export market and its imports fell by 80 percent. The Gross Domestic Product dropped by more than one third.
"Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash," Jorge Mario, a Cuban economist, told the documentary crew. A crash that put Cuba into a state of shock. There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third.
According to a report on Cuba from Oxfam, an international development and relief agency, "In the cities, buses stopped running, generators stopped producing electricity, factories became silent as graveyards. Obtaining enough food for the day became the primary activity for many, if not most, Cubans."
In part due to the continuing US embargo, but also because of the loss of a foreign market, Cuba couldn't obtain enough imported food. Furthermore, without a substitute for fossil-fuel based large-scale farming, agricultural production dropped drastically.
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.
"There are infinite small solutions," said Roberto Sanchez from the Cuban-based Foundation for Nature and Humanity. "Crises or changes or problems can trigger many of these things which are basically adaptive. We are adapting."
A New Agricultural Revolution
Cubans are also replacing petroleum-fed machinery with oxen, and their urban agriculture reduces food transportation distances. Today an estimated 50 percent of Havana's vegetables come from inside the city, while in other Cuban towns and cities urban gardens produce from 80 percent to more than 100 percent of what they need.
In turning to gardening, individuals and neighborhood organizations took the initiative by identifying idle land in the city, cleaning it up, and planting.
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| Farmers pose with their produce at a farmers' market in downtown Havana. The Cuban government now allows these private markets, which provide year-round fresh local food to the community. (Photo by John Morgan) |
When the Australian permaculturists came to Cuba they set up the first permaculture demonstration project with a $26,000 grant from the Cuban government.
Out of this grew the Foundation for Nature and Humanity's urban permaculture demonstration project and center in Havana. "With this demonstration, neighbors began to see the possibilities of what they can do on their rooftops and their patios," said Carmen López, director of the urban permaculture center, as she stood on the center's rooftop amongst grape vines, potted plants, and compost bins made from tires.
Since then the movement has been spreading rapidly across Havana's barrios. So far López' urban permaculture center has trained more than 400 people in the neighborhood in permaculture and distributes a monthly publication, "El Permacultor." "Not only has the community learned about permaculture," according to López, "we have also learned about the community, helping people wherever there is need."
One permaculture student, Nelson Aguila, an engineer-turned-farmer, raises food for the neighborhood on his integrated rooftop farm. On just a few hundred square feet he has rabbits and hens and many large pots of plants. Running free on the floor are gerbils, which eat the waste from the rabbits, and become an important protein source themselves. "Things are changing," Sanchez said. "It's a local economy. In other places people don't know their neighbors. They don't know their names. People don't say 'hello' to each other. Not here."
Since going from petrochemical intensive agricultural production to organic farming and gardening, Cuba now uses 21 times less pesticide than before the Special Period. They have accomplished this with their large-scale production of bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers, exporting some of it to other Latin American countries.
Though the transition to organic production and animal traction was necessary, the Cubans are now seeing the advantages. "One of the good parts of the crisis was to go back to the oxen," said Miguel Coyula, a community development specialist, "Not only do they save fuel, they do not compact the soil the way the tractor does, and the legs of the oxen churn the earth."
"The Cuban agricultural, conventional, 'Green Revolution' system never was able to feed the people," Sanchez said. "It had high yields, but was oriented to plantation agriculture. We exported citrus, tobacco, sugar cane and we imported the basic things. So the system, even in the good times, never fulfilled people's basic needs."
Drawing on his permaculture knowledge, Sanchez said, "You have to follow the natural cycles, so you hire nature to work for you, not work against nature. To work against nature, you have to waste huge amounts of energy."
Energy Solutions
Because most of Cuba's electricity had been generated from imported oil, the shortages affected nearly everyone on the island. Scheduled rolling blackouts several days per week lasted for many years. Without refrigerators, food would spoil. Without electric fans, the heat was almost unbearable in a country that regularly has temperatures in the 80s and 90s.
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.
Ecosol Solar and Cuba Solar are two renewable energy organizations leading the way. They help develop markets for renewable energy, sell and install systems, perform research, publish newsletters, and do energy efficiency studies for large users.
Ecosol Solar has installed 1.2 megawatts of solar photovoltaic in both small household systems (200 watt capacity) and large systems (15-50 kilowatt capacity). In the United States 1.2 megawatts would provide electricity to about 1000 homes, but can supply power to significantly more houses in Cuba where appliances are few, conservation is the custom, and the homes are much smaller.
About 60 percent of Ecosol Solar's installations go to social programs to power homes, schools, medicals facilities, and community centers in rural Cuba. It recently installed solar photovoltaic panels to electrify 2,364 primary schools throughout rural Cuba where it was not cost effective to take the grid. In addition, it is developing compact model solar water heaters that can be assembled in the field, water pumps powered by PV panels, and solar dryers.
A visit to "Los Tumbos," a solar-powered community in the rural hills southwest of Havana demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies can have. Once without electricity, each household now has a small solar panel that powers a radio and a lamp. Larger systems provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room, where residents gather to watch the evening news program called the "Round Table." Besides keeping the residents informed, the television room has the added benefit of bringing the community together.
"The sun was enough to maintain life on earth for millions of years," said Bruno Beres, a director of Cuba Solar. "Only when we [humans] arrived and changed the way we use energy was the sun not enough. So the problem is with our society, not with the world of energy."
Transportation - A System of Ride Sharing
Cubans also faced the problem of providing transportation on a reduced energy diet. Solutions came from ingenious Cubans, who often quote the phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention." With little money or fuel, Cuba now moves masses of people during rush hour in Havana. In an inventive approach, virtually every form of vehicle, large and small, was used to build this mass transit system. Commuters ride in hand-made wheelbarrows, buses, other motorized transport and animal-powered vehicles.
One special Havana transit vehicle, nicknamed a "camel," is a very large metal semi-trailer, pulled by a standard semi-truck tractor, which holds 300 passengers. Bicycles and motorized two-passenger rickshaws are also prevalent in Havana, while horse drawn carts and large old panel trucks are used in the smaller towns.
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| This unique Cuban transport vehicle, called a "camel", can carry 300 passengers. (Photo by John Morgan) |
Government officials in yellow garb pull over nearly empty government vehicles and trucks on Havana's streets and fill them with people needing a ride. Chevys from the 1950s cruise along with four people in front and four more in back.
A donkey cart with a taxi license nailed to the frame also travels Cuba's streets. Many trucks were converted to passenger transport by welding steps to the back so riders could get on and off with ease.
Health Care and Education - National Priorities
Even though Cuba is a poor country, with a per capita Gross Domestic Product of only $3,000 per year (putting them in the bottom third of all nations), life expectancy is the same as in the U.S., and infant mortality is below that in the U.S. The literacy rate in Cuba is 97 percent, the same as in the U.S. Cuba's education system, as well as its medical system is free.
When Cubans suffered through their version of a peak oil crisis, they maintained their free medical system, one of the major factors that helped them to survive. Cubans repeatedly emphasize how proud they are of their system.
Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, there was one doctor for every 2000 people. Now there is a doctor for every 167 people. Cuba also has an international medical school and trains doctors to work in other poor countries. Each year there are 20,000 Cuban doctors abroad doing this kind of work.
With meat scarce and fresh local vegetables in abundance since 1995, Cubans now eat a healthy, low-fat, nearly vegetarian, diet. They also have a healthier outdoor lifestyle and walking and bicycling have become much more common. "Before, Cubans didn't eat that many vegetables. Rice and beans and pork meat was the basic diet," Sanchez from the Foundation for Nature and Humanity said. "At some point necessity taught them, and now they demand [vegetables]."
Doctors and nurses live in the community where they work and usually above the clinic itself. In remote rural areas, three-story buildings are constructed with the doctor's office on the bottom floor and two apartments on the second and third floors, one for the doctor and one for the nurse.
In the cities, the doctors and nurses always live in the neighborhoods they serve. They know the families of their patients and try to treat people in their homes. "Medicine is a vocation, not a job," exclaimed a Havana doctor, demonstrating the motivation for her work. In Cuba 60 percent of the doctors are women.
Education is considered the most important social activity in Cuba. Before the revolution, there was one teacher for every 3,000 people. Today the ratio is one for every 42 people, with a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 16. Cuba has a higher percentage of professionals than most developing countries, and with 2 percent of the population of Latin America, Cuba has 11 percent of all the scientists.
In an effort to halt migration from the countryside to the city during the Special Period, higher education was spread out into the provinces, expanding learning opportunities and strengthening rural communities. Before the Special Period there were only three institutions of higher learning in Cuba. Now there are 50 colleges and universities throughout the country, seven in Havana.
The Power of Community
Throughout its travels, the documentary crew saw and experienced the resourcefulness, determination, and optimism of the Cuban people, often hearing the phrase "Sí, se puede" or "Yes it can be done."
People spoke of the value of "resistir" or "resistance," showing their determination to overcome obstacles. And they have lived under a U.S. economic blockade since the early 1960s, viewed as the ultimate test of the Cuban ability to resist.
There is much to learn from Cuba's response to the loss of cheap and abundant oil. The staff of The Community Solution sees these lessons as especially important for people in developing countries, who make up 82 percent of the world's population and live more on life's edge. But developed countries are also vulnerable to shortages in energy. And with the coming onset of peak oil, all countries will have to adapt to the reality of a lower energy world.
With this new reality, the Cuban government changed its 30-year motto from "Socialism or Death" to "A Better World is Possible." Government officials allowed private entrepreneurial farmers and neighborhood organizations to use public land to grow and sell their produce. They pushed decision-making down to the grassroots level and encouraged initiatives in their neighborhoods. They created more provinces. They encouraged migration back to the farms and rural areas and reorganized their provinces to be in-line with agricultural needs.
From The Community Solution's viewpoint, Cuba did what it could to survive, despite its ideology of a centralized economy. In the face of peak oil and declining oil production, will America do what it takes to survive, in spite of its ideology of individualism and consumerism? Will Americans come together in community, as Cubans did, in the spirit of sacrifice and mutual support?
"There is climate change, the price of oil, the crisis of energy ." Beres from Cuba Solar said, listing off the challenges humanity faces. "What we must know is that the world is changing and we must change the way we see the world."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This article appeared in the special Peak Oil issue of Permaculture Activist, Spring 2006, (www.permacultureactivist.net). The author, Megan Quinn, is the outreach director for The Community Solution, (www.communitysolution.org), a program of Community Service Inc., a nonprofit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio. For information about its soon-to-be-released documentary, "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" visit its website, e-mail her at megan@communitysolution.org, or call 937-767-2161.
UPDATE (Feb 27): We added the last two paragraphs of the article that had inadvertently been omitted.
-BA Article found at : http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=13171
Original article : http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657
Iran in gas deal with European firms
Saturday 25 February 2006, 12:57 Makka Time, 9:57 GMT Al Jazeera http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6BD7F0E3-19F0-47FC-8B0A-3E16003FDE97.htm
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Iran will next week grant Total, Shell and Repsol upstream development contracts in the Gulf's giant South Pars gas field, an Iranian state oil firm says.
Iran intends to use phases 11 and 13 of South Pars, which sits on the world's biggest reservoir of natural gas, to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The Islamic Republic hopes to export its first LNG shipments in 2009.
A spokesman for the Pars Oil and Gas Company said on Saturday: "The signings will be late this week."
The Iranian working week starts on Saturday and ends on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the institution.
Total is planning to develop phase 11 of South Pars to produce LNG, gas super-cooled to liquid for loading onto tankers, in a project called Pars LNG.
Shell and Repsol are planning to do the same with phase 13, a project called Persian LNG.
Billion dollar deal
Akbar Torkan, managing director of the Pars Oil and Gas Company, was quoted by the Abrar-e Eqtesadi financial daily as saying the contract to develop phase 11 would be worth $1.2-$1.4 billion.
The phase 13 deal would be worth $1.5 billion, he added.
Although it sits on the world's second biggest reserves of natural gas, Iran has been very slow to develop exports.
Qatar, which draws its gas from the same Gulf reservoir, is a long-established LNG exporter.
Iran has been reported to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions after failing to convince the world that its atomic ambitions are entirely peaceful.
However, Iran has struck a defiant tone on its oil and gas industry, saying industrialised countries would never dare to embargo hydrocarbons from Opec's number two exporter while oil prices remain high.
Torkan also told the ISNA students news agency that Pars Oil and Gas Company had tendered phases 19-21 of South Pars.
[As I've said before it would be a big mistake to forget to watch what's happening in the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan. This development,largely neglected by the mainstream media today, may well be the beginnings of a nuclear standoff in six months. – MCR]
Taiwan's Chen scraps China unification body
Mon Feb 27, 7:51 AM ET
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian scrapped an advisory council on unifying the island with China, a move that Beijing has warned would set off a serious crisis in the region.
The decision to shut down the National Unification Council (NUC) and to scrap symbolic guidelines on possible reunification with mainland China came despite pressure against the move from Taiwan's close ally Washington.
"The National Unification Council will cease functioning and the budget no longer be appropriated," said the pro-independence Chen, an outspoken critic of Beijing's claim of sovereignty over the island.
"The National Unification Guidelines will also cease to apply," Chen told reporters after a meeting of Taiwan's top security agency, the National Security Council.
Chen said the decision had been prompted by "China's persistent military threat and its attempts to use non-peaceful means to unilaterally change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait."
China has stockpiled at least 700 ballistic missiles targeting Taiwan and repeatedly threatens to invade the island if it should move towards declaring formal independence.
The decision to abolish the council and the guidelines will take effect on Tuesday.
The US, which does not support Taiwanese independence and opposes unilateral changes to the status quo by either Taiwan or Beijing, had also pressed Chen not to get scrap the council, fearing the prospect of a military showdown.
Chen defended the controversial decision, saying "what we are doing today is to safeguard freedom, democracy, human rights and peace of the status quo, to protect the right of free choice of the 23 million Taiwan people."
Chen said he did not rule out any option for the development of relations with mainland China, based on the free will of the people of Taiwan.
Even though China and Taiwan separated after civil war in 1949, Beijing still considers the island part of its territory and has threatened it would retake the island by force if it ever declared independence.
"This is a dangerous sign of the escalation of activities by Taiwan separatists," China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Chen Yunlin, director of the mainland's cabinet-level Taiwan Affairs Office, as saying last week.
In a statement on its website, the office said that Chen's move "will certainly trigger a serious crisis across the Taiwan Straits and destroy peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region."
It added: "We must sternly ask Chen Shui-bian to immediately stop his plan, which will bury the win-win prospects between the two sides of the (Taiwan) Strait."
The previous Nationalist government of the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1990 established the NUC which adopted a year later the guidelines seeking eventual reunification of the two rivals.
The NUC, a subordinate office under the presidential office, was structured to comprise 32 leaders from both govennment and private sectors. It recommends national reunification politices to the president, helps the government to devise a national reunification framework and builds consensus at all levels of society and in all political parties.
Currently there is no council member as the body has been dormant since Chen, from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), took office in 2000.
In his inaugural speech in 2000, and again after re-election in 2004, Chen vowed not to disband the body nor scrap the guidelines.
But last month he reversed his position and said he was considering abolishing the unification council and the guidelines. The DPP voted last week to endorse the plan.
Opposition lawmakers Monday threatened to launch massive protests if Chen went ahead and scrapped the council.
Oil expert: Output downhill from here
Energy - Author Ken Deffeyes thinks the depletion of fossil fuels could lead to a worldwide cataclysm
Monday, February 27, 2006 TED SICKINGER The Oregonian http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/ 1140854437306230.xml&coll=7
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Few petroleum geologists qualify as celebrities. But Ken Deffeyes, a former Shell Oil geologist who is now a professor emeritus of geosciences at Princeton University, recently sold out Portland's First Congregational Church, where he came to lecture on his latest book, "Beyond Oil."
Before Princeton, Deffeyes worked as a researcher in the labs of Shell Oil and taught at the University of Minnesota and Oregon State University. At Shell, he worked with the now-famous petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert. Hubbert coined what is fast becoming a fixture in the modern lexicon -- "peak oil" -- when he predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s and decline thereafter. Widely criticized at the time, Hubbert has since been vindicated.
Building on Hubbert's hypotheses, Deffeyes recently theorized that world oil production peaked Dec. 16, 2005, and has begun its permanent decline, with economic disruptions to follow.
Deffeyes sat down with The Oregonian last week to discuss his book and the peak oil phenomenon. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.
What's the basic math behind your forecast that world oil production peaked Dec. 16?
Hubbert's theory says that the ease of finding oil depends on the fraction of oil that hasn't been found yet. It's a simple hypothesis that explained U.S. oil production, where we've already gone over the peak and we're halfway down the other side. A corollary that comes out of the math is that the peak occurs when half the oil has been produced. In Chapter 3 of "Beyond Oil," I take the date these oil fields were first discovered, the first wells, and it turns out that the whole world is mature. We've found 94 percent of all the oil we're ever going to find. It's easy to extend that line down to the zero level and say that there are 2.013 trillion barrels that we're on track to discover, and we've already discovered 94 percent of that. So there's not much guesswork in that number. So I divide that number by 2 and I get just over 1 trillion barrels. Then I add up the world oil production from the beginning and figure out when we're halfway, and that's where the Dec. 16 number comes from.
Doesn't a lot depend on the level of oil reserves the Saudis are sitting on?
Matt Simmons has this wonderful book called "Twilight in the Desert." It's a very detailed analysis of the Saudi fields based on papers that the Saudi Aramco petroleum engineers have published in the Journal of Petroleum Geography. He says they're struggling to keep up.
In the supergiant oil fields in Saudi Arabia, the water content is going up. It's called the water cut, the percentage of fluid produced that's water. It was 30 percent when Simmons' book came out. There are rumors now that it's 55 percent. When it gets to 80, things are largely over.
What is the highest estimate of reserves out there?
Reserves are hard to estimate, but if we talk about discoveries, the biggest estimate comes from the U.S. Geological Survey, at just over 3 trillion barrels. If you take their number, we have another 2 trillion barrels to produce and you get a peak in the year 2036. I could give a 15 minute lecture on the flaws in the USGS survey, and I think they're beginning to back off a little bit. In order to make the USGS or things like it correct, we've got to find another Middle East plus another North Sea on top of that. I don't think there's another Middle East lurking out there.
What would drilling in the Arctic Refuge do to the estimate ?
Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in the United States, kicked in when they got the pipeline finished in 1976, and it wasn't big enough to raise us back to our 1970 level of production. It put a little shoulder on the downside of the production curve, but that was it. My guess is that in our wildest dream, ANWAR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) will prove half as big as Prudhoe Bay. I'd have to work out the number, but if that's the case, it probably postpones the world situation for two weeks.
What about offshore fields?
The only thing on the shelf, literally the continental shelf, is the South China Sea, which has been drilled around the edge and it's mostly natural gas. There could be oil out in the middle, but six different countries claim the South China Sea.
What do the oil companies say?
With the oil companies, you have to watch what they do and not what they say. What they're doing is taking in $10 billion and $20 billion a quarter in profits and handing it out as increased dividends, buybacks of their stocks, giving it to their executives. They're not drilling, they're not building new pipelines and not building new refineries. If there were good prospects out there, they'd be out there drilling like crazy.
Is there a portfolio of alternative energy that makes sense
It's those things that we have the technology and engineering ready to go right now. At the top of my shortlist are the high-efficiency diesel automobiles being marketed in Europe right now that get 100 miles to the gallon. Nuclear and wind are things we have engineered right now that are ready to roll. Wind, even in your wildest dreams, is not going to be a very big part of the answer, but every little bit helps. Nuclear, we know how to build and operate safe nuclear power plants. Coal gasification, where you react the coal with steam and a little bit of air and get a little gas, would be a win.
What about oil shale and tar sands?
Oil shale is the fuel of the future and it always will be. In the case of tar sands, they're very heavy users of natural gas right now, for heat to melt the tar and to upgrade the oil so it will travel through a pipeline in a Canadian winter. Alan Greenspan told us more than a year ago that the North American gas market was gassed out. So they're going to be natural gas limited or having to compete with other users of natural gas. There's talk about building a nuclear plant up there, and that's a good idea, but it'll take 10 years to get a plant in there.
Biofuels?
There are both people and cows lined up for soybeans, and it's at least a factor of 2 more expensive than oil right now. Palm oil may be the closest to being the one ready to go to market right now. Ethanol from corn is close to being a tossup. You may use the same amount of energy when you burn the ethanol as goes into the fertilizers, the tractors, the trucks to haul it around. In Brazil, they're doing well with sugar cane.
Where is the economic impact of peak oil going to be felt acutely and when?
Geologists like to look back in time, and I'm not that good at futurology. I borrow the analogy of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war, famine, pestilence and death. Famine because particularly fertilizer is very energy intensive. The green revolution was based on better seed varieties, heavy use of mineral fertilizers, pesticides. Well, pesticides are all petrochemicals, so fertilizer is going to get much more expensive cause they use a lot of energy.
So famine and pestilence really are threats down the line. And if you look up Amos Nur's Web site at Stanford, he thinks the first Gulf War, the Trade Center attacks and the second Gulf War are the first three skirmishes in the oil war.
Do you envision problems gradually getting worse, or some sudden shock?
What I've heard from a lot of people is that it will take something terrible to get people's attention. You mean the World Trade Center wasn't big enough? The Iranian situation, that could trigger it. The hurricanes nearly triggered it. Really abnormally cold winters in the northeastern U.S. and Europe could trigger it. If we got a civil war in Saudi Arabia, you could kiss your lifestyle goodbye. The public will probably say after the fact that XYZ triggered it. That's the naming rights phenomenon, and I can't say which one is going to win.
By the end of this decade, we'll be down about 5 percent from the peak production, and demand in China and India is moving up fast, and someone's going to come up short on their ambitions.
So you really believe the Four Horsemen scenario is somewhat likely?
We're not doing much about it. We could have had a soft landing if we had listened to Jimmy Carter and started 20 years ago. But in the absence of a Winston Churchill or John Kennedy, I'm not sure we're going to get in gear fast enough to avoid this. The mildest form of the disaster is a global recession worse than the Great Depression, and that's a form it could take rather than war, famine, pestilence and death.
How would you prepare for this?
What I'd like to have is farmland on volcanic rich soils so that it doesn't require fertilizer. And I need a place where there's enough rainfall. Maybe this could be in Oregon. Owning something that's relatively energy independent and supplies food for the survivors to eat would be the sweetest target.
tedsickinger@news.oregonian.com
Europe scorns Iran’s nuclear ‘deal’ with Russia
By Daniel Dombey in Brussels
Published: February 27 2006 17:55
Last updated: February 27 2006 17:55
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/14f9a2e8-a7ba-11da-85bc-0000779e2340.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
France, Germany and Britain on Monday sought to increase international pressure on Iran, dismissing Tehran’s announcement that it had reached a “basic agreement” with Russia over its controversial nuclear programme.
The move came as Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, put the finishing touches to a report on Iran’s nuclear programme that will be sent to the United Nations Security Council.
At a European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, both Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, his German counterpart, said any Russian-Iranian agreement was merely technical and failed to meet international concerns over Tehran’s nuclear plans.
“Iran is now at a crossroads,” said Mr Douste-Blazy. “The international community has to respond in a firm, united and rapid manner to [Tehran’s] policy of fait accompli. We can discuss technology and commercial issues with Iran, but it has to cease sensitive nuclear activities first.”
“It looks like decisive progress has not been made,” said Mr Steinmeier. “The Iranian position is an attempt to split the international community. It will not succeed.”
On Sunday, Iran said it had reached an agreement with Sergei Kiriyenko, the visiting head of Russia’s atomic energy agency, on setting up a joint venture to enrich uranium – the process that can produce weapons-grade material.
But although the joint company would be based in Russia, Tehran on Monday clarified that it would only agree to such a step if it could continue research into enrichment in Iran itself.
Iran announced last month that it was resuming such research, an action that led the board of the IAEA, the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, to report it to the Security Council.
While Tehran insists its purposes are purely peaceful, western diplomats say that six to seven months of research would give it the know-how to begin production of material for a nuclear weapon. The IAEA board will meet to discuss the issue next week, after which the file will go to the security council in New York. Western diplomats say the first step there will be a declaration by Argentina, which will hold the council presidency in March, calling on Iran to abide by past IAEA resolutions.
The EU hopes that by increasing the pressure step by step it can convince Iran to repeat its “tactical” decision to suspend uranium enrichment while a longer-term settlement is negotiated.
They argue their case is strengthened by unity among the five permanent members of the security council – including Russia and China, which both have strong energy relationships with Iran – and that Moscow is unhappy with its inconclusive talks with Tehran.
But the Europeans also acknowledge economic sanctions on Iran are unlikely at a time of high oil prices, and people close to Mr ElBaradei say Europe should have offered Iran more technical co-operation and security guarantees.
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The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil