The Oil Drum

54 comments on Megan Quinn of Community Solution: What Can We Learn from Cuba's Response to a Lack of Resources?

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vtpeaknik on February 8, 2007 - 11:17am

However, one can also refuse to recognize necessity and go down in flames. This, of course, is only an abstract possibility, not one that could ever happen. Right?

North Korea. Same event as Cuba (soviet-style industrial agriculture suddenly deprived of oil subsidy when USSR collapsed). They "chose" to starve instead of change.

And to the comments below about how "communism" is the problem, note that there are various flavors of "communism", and apparently the Cuban flavor worked out a lot better than the North Korean flavor.

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Leanan on February 8, 2007 - 12:23pm

I'm not a fan of North Korea, but I'm not sure they're that much worse than Cuba. I think luck had a lot to do with the different outcomes.

Cuba is tropical. They can grow food all year round. Not so in North Korea. Worse, they suffered a series of natural disasters, including a tsunami that ruined a chunk of their best farmland.

This is what concerns me the most about the post-carbon age. You can do all the right things, and still be wiped out by a flood, drought, plague of locusts, or other natural disaster. These days, that is generally a financial tragedy but not an existential one. Cheap oil allows us to grow surpluses and store and transport them to areas where they are needed. It's insurance of a sort. I think we will be losing this cushion in the post-carbon age, especially if we go the biofuels route.

Cuba still imported its staples, like rice and beans. They got some aid from the rest of the world. But we're the bread basket of the world. If we ever find ourselves where Cuba was, who will help us?

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Valuethinker on February 8, 2007 - 2:52pm

Did Cuba still import food post the Soviet collapse?

North Korea really is a far more effed up place than Cuba.

You could argue NK was in a favoured position. Industrialised, and with large domestic coal reserves.

However the nature of that government and its policies is so odious, that this did not stop them from starving over a million people to death, running a giant Gulag, etc.

Partly the problem is the level of militarisation. Cuba has its local militias, but NK is one giant armed camp, and producing more arms, and digging more tunnels all the time.

Cuba is hostile to the US, but NK digs tunnels under the DMZ and sends suicide squads to attack its neighbours.

Cuba is a police state, but the political prisoners number in the thousands at most. In NK, they may number a million or more.

An advantage Cuba has is the remittances by Cubans in the US and other countries, which has sustained domestic consumption and benefited the government. Again NK's policies make that impossible.

When Bush said 'Axis of Evil' it really was propaganda *but* not inappropriate in the case of NK.

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Leanan on February 8, 2007 - 3:58pm

Did Cuba still import food post the Soviet collapse?

Yes, they did. They imported their staples, rice and beans. And they did receive some international aid (though not from us - at least, not directly).