Cuba’s Choice: Progressive Renewable or Backward Industrial?
HAVANA TIMES — Once the embargo is lifted, this could be a very exciting time for Cubans if they play their cards right, if they model a new society on the same economic model as Sweden and Norway, if they choose renewable energy over fossil fuels, and if they enforce strong environmental regulations that protect their tropical forests, valuable vegetation, their oceans and wildlife.
This is a time for President Raúl Castro to look forward, not backwards to the dark age of fossil fuels, the central polluting producer of greenhouse gases (global warming), that’s destroying our Earth, rather, he and the Cuban government should look to the future with solar and wind. Cuba is a tropical island ideally suitable for solar energy.
Cubans could enjoy all the energy they need for their homes, schools and hospitals thanks to the production of new affordable and efficient solar panels.
Perhaps President Raúl Castro could meet with the most intelligent and savvy business leaders in the renewable field of energy such as the founder of Tesla, Elon Musk? Musk and his team designed the Tesla Powerwall, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery designed to store energy at a residential level for load shifting, backup power and self-consumption of solar power generation.
Cuba could become a renewable energy model to the world if they rebuild their infrastructure with 100% renewable energy. If Sweden can do it—in gray cold conditions, imagine how easy it would be for Cuba to light up their entire country with limitless sunshine all year round, and with wind power?
Perhaps the Cuban government can meet with organic farming leaders who greatly admire what Cuba has accomplished with their organic farms?
But if they listen to President Obama, who most likely is a messenger for US corporate advisers, and return to the same, old, backward, industrial model from the 1800s, then all will be lost for Cuba.
Cuba is at the fork of the road: Let’s hope that the Cuban government and the Cuban people take the higher road to the creation of a renewable energy society; and once that’s accomplished, it can open the door to medical advancements based on Cuban’s preventative health care system, and sustainable technology, such as electric cars and EV stations that will preserve their sacred tropical forests, oceans, wildlife and organic farming.
If Cubans choose the higher road—they will not only prosper, economically, without harming their environment, Cuba will set an example for the rest of the world to follow.
Thank you!
Pamela Wood
Hawaii, USA
What drugs are you on? Who has ever said that I live in Cuba? Besides as the Kommisar of the Cuban Ministry of International Espionage and Tidily-Winks Shenanigans, and the Official Vatican Moille, I get to use the Internet anywhere, anytime, with Wilma Espin and Fred Flintstone’s permission, and Alejandro’s firm instructions to locate you and turn you over to the Cuban Hygiene Police for immediate processing: brain to toe washing, front and back, no boarding. I done told Raúl and Fidel to buy more Spanish coffee already, though… and to drop the dead donkey!
You know JACK! You just criticize, I travel in Cuba from Guantánamo to Banes and many little and big places in between, never seen all the hell and misery and shit you describe because it’s all in your head and in your desire to make Cuba, Fidel and Raúl look bad. Anybody who has been to Cuba recently can corroborate the info about agro-markets, they are everywhere and carry all kinds of fresh food. As to food production falling, did I say it wasn’t?
Lucky to have all our words on record here; you are full of BS; accuse me of being some kind of spook, put words in my mouth, criticize without knowing and believe in your “superior powers of intellect, far above those Cuban planners and experts. I already kicked your butt multiple times but I like to do it, so keep it up, jerk. And if you want to get close and personal, we both live in Canada… What are you, about 65, retired and married to a 20 some, Cuban lady? Yes, I think I get the drift…Take another hike, Carlyle, don’t come back if you wanna.
It is said that Socialism needs capitalism to survive and Capitalsm needs a little socialism to be tolerated. A system is only sustainable if the producers continue to produce goods and services. No man willingly allows theft of 90% of their work by the state in order to be given to others in the long run. Such models always fail.
Organic gardening has been the rage in the US for a long time. I have my own.
If you actually believe what you wrote, then you are totally ignorant of the reality of Cuban agriculture. When at your next breakfast indoctrination breakfast with Raul and Fidel (I refer to your revealing that in these columns), you are sipping the coffee Mezcla imported from Spain, you can report your opposition to Cuban coffee production and encourage even more importation and less Cuban food production – that ought to please the regime, as they have been pursuing that policy with increasing success.
As for your statement that urban markets are full of fresh product, time for you to get of your backside and take a look around Cuba.
You are correct, I did not complain about having the Head of the CIA for President as I am not an American. But, have you complained about the non-elected President Raul Castro Ruz having his son in the equivalent position in Cuba?
I don’t claim to know about everything, but I do claim to know about agriculture and Cuba’s dismal ever reducing agricultural production under the Castro family regime is a recorded matter of record and has as you should know been a subject at the Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.
If – which you claim, you live in Cuba, how do you gain access to the Internet, because I can’t when I am at home, which is the reason why I can only contribute to these columns during my interludes in Canada. Do you report also to Alejandro Espin Castro?
Try having the head of the CIA for President or General Powell as Secretary of State…Did you complain about that anywhere? I say that if the hat fits, wear it. You are such a stereotype of the worst type of guest, you criticize without all the info but you think you know everything. Sugar, our monoculture for years, brought hunger for 9 months of the year, destroyed the land and chained us to a market that was set against us, I’m glad we have outgrown that curse. As far as importing food, who does not in today’s world? Would a 10 hectare field of onions or pineapples yield more for the economy than a Golf Club for International Millionaires? The Green Revolution is now deeply ingrained in the consciousness of Cubans, rural people grow organic produce for themselves and others in private and communal gardens, city people are also engaged in Urban Farming to a lesser degree. Urban markets are full of fresh produce, that is not a problem anywhere I have been and that is right across the Island.
Coffee is a horrible plant that depletes the soil, requires a lot of care and produces a non-nutritious crop, I’d rather the land revert to “nature” than used to produce something for an already crowded international market. Tobacco is similar but since we export a finished product (cigars, cigarettes and processed tobacco) instead of a raw seed like coffee, and it is considered the best in the world, so it is cost-productive.
Let’s now bring into the discussion the present drought and future drying trend of our Cuban climate, and the demand for water that an agrarian program for food self-sufficiency would create. We talked about this before. It would mean less and less water for personal and industrial use, likely not enough for everything.
Your solution for Cuba would then be to make us back into a “banana republic” growing, extracting, and exploiting our natural resources at a basic level (sugar, coffee, food) instead of promoting our tourist industry, which brings in a lot more money to spend back on the People, including importing food and consumer goods. You know, at first I thought your comments were well-intended, then i took you for just another “ingenu” with lots of time in his/her hands and a too high opinion of their intellectual capacities, now I believe you are just another Castro Troll trying to pollute our minds
Maybe if the USA would agree to pay for all the sabotage, all the terrorism, all the damage done by Bay of Pigs and 54 years of economic warfare, we could talk about confiscated property. Right now, Cuban Americans in the USA have claimed 1.7 times the total area of Cuba and all its Islands put together as “property confiscated from them by the Revolutionary Government”, this BS figure does not include property owned by USA Corporations or individuals who were USA citizens in 1960. And, by the by, there already has been a lot of change for the better in Cuba in the past few years, you should try setting fire that old Cuban Property tittle and lighting a good Romeo and Julieta with it.
Nothing will change in Cuba, until the title to confiscated land is returned to previous owners and they have confidence that their taxes will be used to repair 60 years of neglect.
Stating that organic arming leaders greatly admire what Cuba has accomplished with “their” organic farms is frankly rubbish. International farming leaders visiting Cuba are dismayed to see the hundreds of thousands of acres of good agricultural land reverting to bush. Agricultural production in Cuba has diminished year after year including even coffee – prior to the revolution there were 57 coffee producers at Terrazas – now, none. If the Cuban Castro family regime has concern for the hungry of the world, it could increase Cuban food production by hundreds of thousands, nay, by millions of tonnes per year instead sugar production has fallen by 85% over 25 years. The Castro family regime chooses not to produce but to import an ever increasing percentage of food from other countries – predominantly capitalist ones! Where is Cuba’s green revolution? Who introduced such a revolution to India? GAESA apparently has the investment capital to build thousands of additional hotel rooms to add to the existing 26,000 it controls. Why not put half that money into producing food?
The problem is not the embargo (which has served as a wonderful scapegoat for the regime) it is the Socialismo system of control and power over everything. Just imagine having a Military General (of many years) as Minister of Agriculture!
A noble series of thoughts. We all dream of some utopia. But in the real world, such dreams require investment capital. Any thoughts on where it is going to come from? It seems that the investment capital is controlled by those damned capitalists who want an economic return.