Solutions & sustainability – Feb 25

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

After the crash, Iceland’s women lead the rescue
Ruth Sunderland, The Observer
Iceland’s spectacular meltdown was caused by a banking and business culture that was buccaneering, reckless – and overwhelmingly male. Business editor Ruth Sunderland travelled to Reykjavik to meet the women now running the country, and heard how they are determined to reinvent business and society by injecting values of openness, fairness and social responsibility
(22 February 2009)

Teaching Cuba’s Energy Revolution (PDF)
Mario Alberto Arrastía Avila and and Laurie Guevara-Stone, Solar Today
A two-decade fuel shortage turned the island into a laboratory for
energy conservation. Education plays a key role in helping the economy function.
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Before 1989, Cuba traded sugar for oil on very reasonable terms with the Soviet Union. Beginning in 1989, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the island nation was forced to buy oil on the open market. Imports from Russia dropped by 50 percent, and oil consumption dropped 20 percent, from 225,000 barrels a day in 1989 to 180,000 barrels a day in 1992. Transport was hit hard, along with electric generation. The United States also tightened its blockade against Cuba, making the economic crisis even worse.

For two decades, Cuba has been developing renewable energy and energy-conservation strategies to cope with the fuel shortage. Educating citizens about energy conservation has been one of Cuba’s programs to move toward a more sustainable energy future. Energy advocates quickly learned that behavioral changes require the introduction of new values in the whole society, and they determined that energy education is the most cost-effective method for saving energy.

The national newspaper Granma reported in 2006 that solving the energy problem “is not as simple as reducing carbon emissions in energy production and transportation; the current circumstances demand changes in the cultural framework of producers and consumers, and a promotion of an energy consciousness.”

Educating a population of 11.5 million about energy is a tall order. Cuba’s energy education program focused on creating a new energy culture and on achieving sustainable development.
(January/February 2009)
Forwarded to EB by several readers. Related links:
BIODIVERSITY AND PROTECTED REGIONS

HEALTH CARE AND TRADITIONAL MEDICINE
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1733

The Answer is in the Trees
Elaine Solowey, Casuabon’s Book

This is a guest post by Elaine Solowey, an Israeli orchardist and the director of sustainable agriculture for the Arava Institute for Environjmental Studies, who has been kind enough to share her work on this blog before.

As we celebrate Tu Bishvat, the holiday of the trees, we need to take a critical look at our cultivation and production methods. Whereas tree crops represent one of the most sustainable forms of agriculture, they are outnumbered by modern agriculture’s megacrops, which badly damage the earth.

…Perennial crops are inherently more sustainable than the annual crops of modern agriculture, which need to be replanted each year. Sustainable agriculture can help heal the earth – if we recognize its value in boosting the quality of our food and land.

…Erosion is the enemy of both agriculture and civilization, according to J. Russell Smith, author of “Tree Crops,” a classic text on arboreal agriculture.

…Just about every damaging factor in modern agriculture is absent from arboreal cultivation. Tree crops can actually yield significantly more food, including carbohydrates and animal feed. Once upon a time, in ancient Greece and among Native Americans in California , for example, the main source of bread was oak trees. The bottom line is that there are many alternative options that need to be explored.

Moreover, the ecological benefits of trees are profound: They make food and oxygen, and manufacture topsoil by breaking up rocks in the subsoil and releasing minerals later stored in fruit, seeds and leaves. Their roots stabilize the soil and protect it – creating microorganisms and insect homes. Trees stop erosion, store water and are magnets for rain. A mature deciduous tree may give off 500 liters of water from its approximately six acres of surface area on a warm summer day. The cool air under the trees, drawn upward as rain clouds glide over, often leads to rain. The trees then absorb water through their leaves, and the raindrops settle among their roots.

With all the benefits of arboreal agriculture, why then are plowed crops the most prevalent form of cultivation?
(25 February 2009)