Summary
The world is close to reaching, or has reached, its Peak Oil. After Peak Oil, prices will climb and our fossil fuel dependent culture will become increasingly more difficult to sustain. One nation that has already passed their “Peak Oil” is Cuba. Cuba received much of its oil from the former Soviet Union, but once that collapsed, Cuba had to find a way to successfully live with reduced oil consumption. Since 1990, Cuba has accomplished a life with little oil. Even though it is a poor country, Cuba is a leader in the medical world, with great health education, free health care, good diets, and a prevent first method that has created the same life expectancy as the United States. Doctors live in the community and go to the people that need treatment, saving the sources needed to bring patients to hospital. Doctors of Cuba treat medicine as a “vocation, not a job.” Cuba also has an established education system. While not many people go to college, they all attend school for 12 years. At school, they also learn skills like farming, auto repair, and sewing, becoming self-reliant. A large part of Cuba’s success is their ride sharing. The “Camel” a 300 person bus and a strong commitment to car-pooling have helped to decrease the oil used. Some “taxis” and “buses” are mule drawn wagons, again saving oil. Plus, Cuban homes are smaller than the average American home, needing less energy to maintain upkeep. Cubans also live several generations together, saving space for others. Along with smaller homes, many people are moving back to rural areas. Instead of crowding the cities, they live off their own land, because they have learned how. Even under a heavy US embargo, Cuba has created a sustainable society that exists with little oil reliance, a skill that will be needed around the world sooner than later.

Answers:
Ways Cuba was able to sustain their society after the loss of fossil fuel imports were by establishing a strong health care program that lets the population live higher quality lives, learning practical skills at a young age, car-pooling and mass public transportation to reduce oil use, smaller housing, and migrating out of cities and back to the country.
Relocalization is a reasonable response to reduced energy because it would create a sustainable community without the large need for outside supplies that would cost high energy amounts to produce, transport, and store. Relocalization has the merits of every community making their own food and other products around their home, saving money and keeping spent money in the local economy, but it has the drawback of not every resource needed can be obtained in the community, also life-styles would decrease as creature comforts decline and more emphasis is placed on hard work on the land to grow food or make hand crafts.

Questions:
1-Cuba’s health care contains doctors that work for little money incentive because they live in a society that allows poorer living standards. Can a materialistic culture make it possible for doctors to achieve the doctor title by lowering medical school costs, living costs, and other high prices found in society?
2-The lower oil needed and slower transportation works in a smaller island nation but how effective would that method be in a nation like the United States with a lot more land?
3-How does the communist regime of Cuba effect the mandatory schools and skills taught at those schools?