OIL DRIVES THE WORLD - BBI20

People don’t realise how important oil is to the world and how a shortage of oil would have a large impact on our lives for the following reasons, it would mean trouble for businesses, the government will start losing money, an increase in prices for goods and a change in our lifestyle.
Firstly, our society is interdependent, which means that we rely on goods and services to satisfy our needs and wants. But if there was an oil shortage, our economic systems would start to concern the consumers because businesses, the producers, will no longer be able to provide as many goods for a reasonable price. The shortage of our economic resource will result in an increase of the price of oil. This is bad news for businesses because it will cost a lot more to import the goods from other places since the cost of oil is so high. This means that they will have to raise the price of their good. So unless the good is in high demand, consumers will not want to purchase the good, resulting in the business not making enough profit. And because businesses will have to cut back on importing the goods, we will start losing human resources, because if the producers have nothing to supply, they won’t have anything to sell. This will increase the percentage of unemployment.

Secondly, the government will start to lose money. The government and businesses work together to grow the marketplace. But if there was a shortage of supply, businesses start shutting down and the government starts losing money. They would have to find a way to share the oil in a fair way with businesses. They would have to think about what consumers need and what they want. They would have to cut down on many things. For example, building new restaurants or malls. It would use up a lot of oil which would make it expensive to build. It is probably something the consumers would want but certainly not need. They would also have to try to change the consumer’s taste which can increase the demand for something else, something that uses less oil to produce.

Thirdly, the consumers would have to pay a lot more for goods than before. Practically everything we touch is made up of oil. And producers have to increase the cost because if they don’t, they would be paying more for oil cost, and not be making any profit when selling goods for regular price. This impacts consumers and communities because it would be harder to afford things like food.
Even taking a hot shower and heating would cost a lot more. People will then start to realise how precious oil really is, and how dependant they were on it without even really knowing it. The demand for everything would increase but there wouldn’t be enough supply to go around and this will definitely concern and scare a lot of consumers.

Lastly, people might start to ask, “how will life change?”, “Will it be better or worse?”, and to be honest, I don’t know. I’m sure science and technology will come up with something but I’d much rather live a simpler lifestyle. Even though there would be disadvantages to it, there are also benefits, such as breathing in cleaner air, and less pollution. This also strongly helps wildlife. But it’s unlikely that will happen, many people aren’t prepared to live differently and with so much demand for oil, people start becoming greedy, and when all the supply is gone there will be chaos.

In conclusion, a shortage of oil would impact our lives because businesses would start shutting down resulting in unemployment, the government will start losing money, the prices for goods will increase and lastly our lifestyle will change. So we should all really be more aware of how much of our resources were using because once it’s all gone, we’ll regret not caring.