Cuba was never a place that particularly interested me, probably because I don't smoke cigars, and it's not easily accessible to most of us living in the US.
However, I recently watched a film called "The Power of Community" which is about Cuba during the mid-90s when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost access to half its petroleum and 80% of its food. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds in the next 4 years as the country scrambled to find ways to feed, house, and transport its people without the easy access to petroleum they previously had. The results are astonishing; 80% of produce grown in Cuba is now organic, they use about 1/8th of the petroleum they used to, and many people have become healthier due to an increase in vegetables and fruits in their diets as well as more exercise through bicycling and public transit.
As the world hits Peak Oil and as various current events around the world show, Americans' access to cheap oil may be coming to an end and if we don't begin to take proactive steps towards curbing our consumption, we may end up in a pretty dire situation like Cuba was in the 90s. Of course this "disaster" turned out to be for the better in many ways for them and perhaps it will be the only way that we Americans will begin to understand that the American way of life as is just isn't sustainable.
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