Socialist Voice
Number 129, July 2, 2007
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Cuba's Fight Against
Capitalism's Climate Crisis
by James Haywood

"Cuba has an energy policy whose core concept is to rely less and less
on hydrocarbons and give greater space in the energy balance to
renewable sources like solar, wind, tide, and water. Cuba has put in
place a conservation system that starts at house level and continues to
the public sector and cooperative farms, by substituting incandescent
lamps by fluorescent bulbs, distributing energy-saving household
appliances, and revamping the national power grid." (Elsy Fors, Prensa
Latina, June 8, 2007)

Much has been written about healthcare and education in revolutionary
Cuba, but the country's fight against capitalism's destruction
of the environment is equally remarkable.
Mass mobilizations
The cleanup of Havana Bay, which involves over 40 local People's
Councils, is just one example of the high priority given to the
environment by the Cuban government. It is much more than a simple
cleanup: Cuba's holistic approach to the environment can be seen in
the way it dealt with the river Luyanó, which was accumulating
organic waste from four large slaughterhouses that were contaminating
the water. To ensure that the pollution didn't recur, the Cubans
implemented a simple yet dramatic fix: they relocated the
slaughterhouses. Imagine that even being considered in a capitalist
country!

Another example is a Wind Park recently opened in the municipality of
the Isle of Youth to provide 10% of the municipality's electrical
needs. That's impressive enough, but so too is the approach to
construction: work began on it in August last year and by January one
machine had already begun delivering power. What's more, because
ferocious storms affect the area, the entire wind farm is designed to be
dismantled within 3 hours.

The list of initiatives is endless; from investing in better piping to
stop leaks and save water, to the South Coast Project, which is cleaning
up the environment along a 142 km strip of coastline south of Havana
Province and improving the lives of the people in the area at the same
time.

This is really the key point — Cuba is not imposing Green policies
on the masses, it is mobilizing the Cuban people to confront climate
change and environmental degradation.

Cuba's response to the U.N. Climate Change Conference's call for
140 billion trees to be planted in 10 years is a case in point. The
Ministry of Agriculture mobilized people through mass organizations such
as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) and the
Federation of Cuban Women: 24.3% of Cuban land now is planted with
trees.

In Cuba: Beyond the Crossroads, Ron Ridenour described a similar
mobilization to distribute energy saving light bulbs:

"Many of the nation's youths were being organized to conduct social
tasks and save on energy. In 2005, these social workers — mostly
university students on study leaves — began going door-to-door
replacing filaments and light bulbs with new ones which save enormous
amounts of energy and reduce dangerous carbon pollution. The first bulbs
are provided courtesy of the government. By the end of the year, five
million people had been served. By summer 2006, as predicted, the policy
was implemented nationwide, and energy savings alone from the new lights
had tripled…. [Cuba] is the only country in the world to implement a
universal low-energy, low-polluting lighting policy. By summer 2006, the
low-energy, low-polluting bulbs are the only ones sold in Cuban stores."

Today Cuban social workers are helping other Caribbean nations to
convert to energy saving light bulbs. Crofton St Louis, a member of the
UK Cuba Solidarity Campaign, was in Grenada during this effort.

"I only knew of the scheme when two young Cubans visited me … and
offered to make the no strings attached switch. I agreed and the two
young men set about the task. As I looked out I saw teams including
young women in their distinctive red T-shirts going from door to door in
the neighborhood." (CubaSi, Spring 2007)
Urban farming
In the early 1990s Cuba lost almost three-quarters of its trade due to
the collapse of the USSR. During this time, which they refer to as the
"Special Period," Cuban workers were forced to improvise and work with
whatever was available. Oil, for example, was scarce and agricultural
labourers had to abandon tractors for oxen.

An important result of this Special Period was the growth of urban
agriculture. Workers in cities were encouraged to grow their own fruit
and vegetables on allotments, balconies and virtually every other open
space. The organopónicos, as they are called, today account for 90%
of fruit and vegetables consumed in Havana.

This move away from massive industrial farming based on toxic pesticides
and monocultural export crops has led to more sustainable farming in
Cuba, and an improved diet for the population.

At the same time, Cuban agriculture has been shifting from dependence on
sugar to a wider variety of food crops in an effort to become more
self-sufficient. Such changes could have been very disruptive, but when
they began in April 2002, the Cuban government offered sugar workers the
choice of moving to new workplaces or going back to school to learn new
skills, and in either case guaranteed that they would earn at minimum
the same wages they had been receiving.
Fidel Castro on biofuels and energy
Other Third World countries are also going through big changes in
agriculture — but the change is in the other direction, away from
food towards monoculture crops for the biofuel industry. Fidel
Castro's first political statements since his recent illness,
published in the Socialist Voice pamphlet Fidel Castro on Global
Warming, Biofuels and World Hunger
<file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Ian/My%20Documents/My%20Webs/myweb4/Pamph\
lets/PamIndex.htm> , attack this disgraceful development.

He describes how the bourgeoisie would "…lend funding to poor
countries to produce corn ethanol, based on corn or any other food, and
not a single tree will be left to defend humanity from climate change."
In effect, some semicolonial countries could be coerced into converting
their agriculture entirely to ethanol production, leaving their
populations to starve.

He developed this point in an article published on May Day of this year:

"The struggle against hunger — and there are some two billion people
who suffer from hunger in the world — will be seriously impaired by
the expansion of land taken over by agrifuel crops. Countries where
hunger is a universal scourge will bear witness to the rapid
transformation of agriculture that would feed the insatiable demand for
fuels needed by a civilization based on their irrational use. The only
result possible is an increase in the cost of food and thus, the
worsening of the social situation in the South countries.

"Moreover, the world population grows 76 million people every year who
will obviously demand food that will be steadily more expensive and
farther out of their reach."

In another article he writes:

"The dangers for the environment and for the human species were a topic
that I had been meditating on for years. What I had never imagined was
the imminence of the danger. We as yet were not aware of the new
scientific information about the celerity of climatic changes and their
immediate consequences."

Fidel has called for "an immediate energy revolution." He points out
that far from fighting climate change, the move to biofuels such as
ethanol will actually make things worse.

"The engines of tractors, harvesters and the heavy machinery required to
mechanize the harvest [of ethanol] would use growing amounts of
hydrocarbons. The increase of mechanization would not help in the
prevention of global warming, something that has been proven by experts
who have measured annual temperatures for the last 150 years."

No capitalist head of state, anywhere, has spoken so insightfully on the
ecological crisis.
Sustainable development
As a result of its efforts to defend the island's environment, Cuba
is the only country in the world that meets internationally recognized
standards for sustainable living and development, including the
WWF's ecological footprint measure and the United Nations
Development Program's Human Development Index.

In the recent Pathfinder Press book, Our History Is Still Being Written,
Armando Choy, who heads the Working Group for the Cleanup, Preservation
and Development of Havana Bay, explains why Cuba has been so successful
in protecting its environment:

"This is possible because our system is socialist in character and
commitment, and because the revolution's top leadership acts in the
interests of the majority of humanity inhabiting planet earth — not
on behalf of narrow individual interests, or even simply Cuba's
national interests."

James Haywood is a Contributing Editor of Socialist Voice.
He lives in Manchester, U.K.

SOCIALIST VOICE
Editors: Roger Annis, John Riddell
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