Cuba: a Green model

Am sipping coffee at an NUT AGM, patiently waiting for a Cuban MP to make her speech, as part of the 50th anniversary year long celebration.
I wonder how many in the wider Green movement are aware of just how green Cuba has become.
How many realise that Cuba can claim to be a model in organic agriculture, energy efficiency (in terms of mass use of CFL bulbs) and solar and wind energy?
80% of Havanas demand for vegetables is met from within the city.
They have replaced energy intensive wasteful Soviet agriculture.
There are many ways to fight energy companies. One way is to promote an alternative model for the poor countries.
So when peak oil hits in five or six years time, some can survive without diverting expensive gas and oil resources to agriculture.
Food is going to be a flashpoint in the next decade – we got an inkling of that in the hedge fund induced commodity speculation of 2008.
The real crisis is coming.
With so many third World elites opposed to green thinking, perhaps we should be couching our arguments in a different manner.
Being Eco friendly should not be about talking in NGO speak.
Instead, it should reflect geopolitical realities. Over the second decade, we will witness the twin crises over fuel and food, set to hit the poor countries hard.
You never win an argument without an alternative model.
Time we looked at Cuba in a different light.

Farid Bakht
Parliamentary candidate for bethnal green & bow

Tens of millions of Americans are hungry

For three decades, the three main UK political parties have followed a project they like to call ‘globalisation’ but which effectively means ‘Americanisation’.
Until the credit crunch, all three told us that America was a successful, prosperous economy and was a role model for the UK. That brand of capitalism apparently worked and we had to ape it or else.
As the cracks appear in that model, (we heard yesterday that house prices have fallen 41% in much of California), a Florida bank collapsed yesterday too, the hidden scandal of inequality and hunger is coming out.
We know about insociant bankers but what about the poor?

In today’s Guardian, Sasha Abramsky pens an article mentioning his book: Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It.
It’s about “the growing crisis of hunger and, more generally, anxiety about how to afford basic food stuffs, and show it percolating upwards throughout the ranks of the unemployed, the working poor and, increasingly, job-insecure portions of the middle class.”
I highlit the middle class in the sentence because it shows just how vulnerable so much of society (today confident and secure) can be transformed into victims – a true shock to the system.
He mentions that obesity is on the rise too – it’s cheaper to eat junk food. Similar things are happening in the UK as sales of fresh fruits and vegetables are declining.
He, however, concentrates on what he terms “a more traditional, skinnier version of food-related poverty has re-emerged in America. As the economy has tanked, tens of millions of people have, quite literally, become unable to buy enough food to survive”.
“What does this mean? Well, basically, that left to the tender mercies of the market, they would now be slipping into malnutrition, even starvation. They literally don’t have either the money or the credit to buy the basic amounts of calories needed to survive. They routinely skip meals in order to put enough food on their kids’ plates, or they eliminate necessary foods (in particular proteins and fresh produce) from their diets to save a few pennies here and there.”
“That they aren’t starving is because, in the arena of food distribution (unlike, say, that of housing), the country’s frayed social safety net remains somewhat intact. Food stamps now serve a larger number of Americans than ever before. And the department of agriculture subsidises a charity network of food banks throughout the country to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.”
“Yet, before we pat ourselves too heartily on the back, let’s examine what this means: the latest estimates are that about 32 million Americans (more than one in 10) are now receiving government food stamps. Texas alone has approximately three million people on food stamps. “
“Nationally, however, the food stamp programme routinely misses about one-in-three of those who are poor enough to qualify – and in states like California that number’s closer to one-in-two. People are afraid to apply, embarrassed to apply, can’t take time off from work to go to aid offices during the week or don’t know about the programme – a problem likely to worsen as funding for state outreach programmes takes a hit because of state budget crises. That means there are at least 10 million more people now poor enough for aid who don’t receive it.”
So let’s see. We have 32 million on food stamps and 10 million on top who don’t receive it but should.
Out of a population of 300 milion, then 42 million cannot feed themselves properly.
You have to pinch yourself when you realise this is America.
Imagine most of the population of England being hungry – that’s the enormity of the scandal.
In a $9 trillion economy, able to spend $800 billion on wars and armies, the ‘great and good’ seem comfortable having 42 million hungry people in the country.
And our main parties want to emulate that kind of economy and society?!?

The author ends with this revealing comment: “I talked with a Wal-Mart worker in upstate New York who ended up with about $15 a week for food expenditures last spring. I spoke with little children in California’s Central Valley who routinely went to bed having had only dry cereal for dinner. “

In the UK, ASDA is owned by Wal Mart.
A vision of the future perhaps?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/18/us-economy-food-stamps-hunger-poverty