HOW DO WE LIVE A GOOD LIFE WHILE USING LESS ENERGY?

The challenges are big, but we can't dodge them any more.

Join us to build the different future we need for Philadelphia and our region.

Come to our Conference for Local Solutions

Oct. 14, 2006

Friends Meeting House
4th and Arch Street in historic Philadelphia

info: 215.219.5158

Keynote Speaker:

PAT MURPHY Executive Director of Community Service and The Community Solution (communitysolution.org)

a producer of the acclaimed documentary, "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil"

With the loss of Soviet oil in 1990, Cuba was forced to undergo an artificial "Peak Oil." This documentary explores how the island nation, through its focus on community, managed not only to survive but to transform their entire society to a sustainable, low-energy-use system

Vision and Mission

The Community Solution is a program of Community Service, Inc. Community Service is dedicated to the development, growth and enhancement of small local communities. We envision a country where the population is distributed in small communities that are sustainable, diverse and culturally sophisticated.

Agraria (Full text at:www.communitysolution.org/agraria.html)

A Proposal for a Post-Peak Oil Community Development in Yellow Springs, Ohio

I. Introduction
"Agraria" is intended to be an innovative Low-energy Use, Small, Sustainable Community. The Low-energy Use designation comes from the knowledge that global oil production will peak soon, followed by natural gas, and ultimately by coal and uranium. Low-energy, in the context of this document, implies a goal of using one-fourth of the current average energy used per capita.1 Sustainable implies a community that can operate, to the extent possible, without inputs (particularly of fossil fuels) and outputs (such as trash and sewage), but also of other materials.

Small is a designation based on the founding principles of our organization, Community Service, Inc., that states smallness itself is a value for positive social organization. And finally, Community implies a way of living together and is also based on the principles of our organization which views a cooperative way of life to be preferable to current competitive ways of living.

Agraria is planned to be an attractive low-energy community that will serve as a model for similar development across the country as a response to Peak Oil. (Peak Oil refers to the point in time when global oil production reaches its maximum and begins to decline. According to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas this may occur as early as 2007.2

The organic gardens, low-energy building techniques and other aspects of the neighborhood-community design will be strong educational tools and even sources of income for some of the neighborhood' residents.

The POWER of COMMUNITY: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
a project of Community Service, Inc.

The documentary, "The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil," was inspired when Faith Morgan and Pat Murphy took a trip to Cuba through Global Exchange in August, 2003. That year Pat had begun studying and speaking about worldwide peak oil production. In May Pat and Faith attended the second meeting of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, a European group of oil geologists and scientists, which predicted that mankind was perilously close to having used up half of the world's oil resources. When they learned that Cuba underwent the loss of over half of its oil imports and survived, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the couple wanted to see for themselves how Cuba had done this.

During their first trip to Cuba, in the summer of 2003, they traveled from Havana to Trinidad and through several other towns on their way back to Havana. They found what Cubans call "The Special Period" astounding and Cuban's responses very moving. Faith found herself wanting to document on film Cuba's successes so that what they had done wouldn't be lost. Both of them wanted to learn more about Cuba's transition from large farms or plantations and reliance on fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, to small organic farms and urban gardens. Cuba was undergoing a transition from a highly industrial society to a sustainable one.

Cuba became, for them, a living example of how a country can successfully traverse what we all will have to deal with sooner or later, the reduction and loss of finite fossil fuel resources. In the fall of 2003 Pat and Faith had the opportunity to return to Cuba to study its agriculture. It was a wonderful trip. They saw much of the island, met many farmers and urban gardeners, scientists and engineers – traveling more than 1700 miles, from one end of Cuba to the other. It was all they had hoped for and more.

In 2004 Community Service, Inc. (CSI) began raising money and organizing a third trip (October), to film in Cuba. Greg Green, cinematographer and director of The End of Suburbia documentary, was the chief videographer. Faith Morgan shot the second camera, John Morgan did still photography and Megan Quinn, Outreach Director of CSI, was sound director. After their return from Cuba, they secured assistance and direction from Tom Blessing IV, producer, and Eric Johnson, post-production supervisor and editor. Together, they bring over 40 years combined experience in film and television production.

The goals of this film are to give hope to the developed world as it wakes up to the consequences of being hooked on oil, and to lift American's prejudice of Cuba by showing the Cuban people as they are. The filmmakers do this by having the people tell their story on film. It's a story of their dedication to independence and triumph over adversity, and a story of cooperation and hope. Several Cubans expressed the belief that living on an island, with its natural boundaries, breeds awareness that there are limits to natural resources.

PAT MURPHY INTERVIEW on The Lessons of Cuba by Julian Darley (Global Public Media)

Community Solutions director and long-time Cuba observer, Pat Murphy, talks with Julian Darley about his recent trips there, and what industrial nations may learn from Cuba's experience of a sudden loss of almost all its oil supply.

See/hear entire interview at: www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/349