Peak Oil Preview

This builds nicely on the the recent film ‘How Cuba survived Peak Oil’ by Faith Morgan and Patrick Murphy. The permaculture related solutions that Cuba has been forced to adopt, along with research into biopesticides and fertilisers (which will soon have to become mainstream across the world) is one of the more hopeful narratives of this year.

Dale Wen adds a bit more detail about Cuba, and some gloom about North Korea, whose government and farmers have failed to learn any such lessons – at least according to the sources consulted by Wen.

That peak oil is coming is no longer a question. It’s only a matter of when. The global food system we are familiar with depends crucially on cheap energy and long-distance transportation—food consumed in the United States travels an average of 1,400 miles. Does peak oil mean inevitable starvation? Two countries provide a preview. Their divergent stories, one of famine, one of sufficiency, stand as a warning and a model.

North Korea and Cuba experienced the peak-oil scenario prematurely and abruptly due to the collapse of the former Soviet bloc and the intensified trade embargo against Cuba. The quite different outcomes are partly due to luck: the Cuban climate allows people to survive on food rations that would be fatal in North Korea’s harsh winters. But the more fundamental reason is policy. North Korea tried to carry on business as usual as long as possible, while Cuba implemented a proactive policy to move toward sustainable agriculture and self-sufficiency.

The 1990s famine in North Korea is one of the least-understood disasters in recent years. It is generally attributed to the failure of Kim Il Jung’s regime. The argument is simple: if the government controls everything, it must be responsible for crop failure. But…

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

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