Above are a 15 year price history and a 150 price history for oil.
Comment on any trends you see.
Note that only once in the past 130 years was oil more costly than it is now.
Ask someone who was alive then how the high price of oil affected them, their jobs, or their decisions.
Ask if they knew why the price went back down then, if they think it will go back down now.
1 comment:
It appears as though that throughout history, when oil prices have rapidly increased, they never stay at that peak price; prices have always reduced somewhat after a very rapid increase. However, in the past, many of these price increases have been caused by political controversy between nations, or reduction in the amount of available oil solely in this country. Now, as it seems that the world’s peak oil is imminent, I’m not so confident that the prices of oil will come back down.
A lack of oil in our country could be a real problem since the members of our society are so dependent upon it. By this I mean that people in our society are too used to a certain lifestyle to so abruptly begin using less oil. For example, during the oil crisis in the 70’s, the amount of gas that each person could get was limited. Cars could only receive gas every couple of days; one day was for odd numbered license plates and the other was for even numbered plates. In the midst of this crisis, people began taking questionable measures in order to obtain gas. I know that many people such as my grandma (on my father’s side) had two tanks so that they could fill their car up twice on the allocated day for gas. Also, many people were so desperate that they would siphon gas out of other people’s cars. This happened to my mother’s family when she was a kid. Considering the extent of our oil dependency, will the world be able to change even once peak oil is reached?
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