Change Your Image
jonathan_pollard
Reviews
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2006)
A lesson in sustainability for backwards oil dependent countries.
This film is for you if you are already convinced of peak/oil and climate change and prefer practical solutions from real-life, large-scale examples.
This is simply the most inspiring film I have seen. It shows clearly how an oil dependent country can make the transition to life without oil. Cuba rediscovered living sustainably when the Soviet Union could no longer supply oil to it. Over three years Cubans lost a few pounds (most of them could afford to as the film points out!) as they couldn't transport food very far. Forced to grow organically (due to no petrochemical fertilisers) it took this three year period for their soil to recover from the hammering it had taken. But they emerged a resilient, self sufficient nation after this period of adjustment.
Cuba faced lack of oil early but is much the better for it. Every country will have to go through it someday and if the climate isn't going to get wrecked that day needs to be sooner rather than later. See this film, pass it on to your politician! This is a positive film and I found it utterly refreshing after the barrage of doom-laden messages about the state of the world today. It made me put extra time in to my allotment!
A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil (2006)
Inspirational
Most environmental films are along the lines of, "You thought the world was bad? Well, actually it's worse...". How refreshing then that a film offers practical solutions from a real-life, large-scale example rather than just showing the problems. Town planners everywhere should see this. Curitba in Brazil needed solutions to the usual major problems facing a large city. A limited budget forced innovative and also environmentally friendly solutions.
What emerged was an effective bus system that rivals underground trains for efficiency, a pioneering recycling scheme that also cleaned up the city by paying people for collecting trash, housing and jobs for people on low incomes and a solution to flooding that also created beautiful park areas. All sound too good to be true? Don't judge a DVD by it's cover (the graphic design was on a budget, too), see this film!