Social Effects of Oil Price Increase

Some people think that just because they don’t own a car or don’t travel around often that increases in oil prices don’t affect them at all. That is completely false. A change in oil prices affects everyone and in this article, I’ll take you to the places where people are already experiencing difficulties coping with the ever changing gas prices.

Mexico City, a mass protest about the rising price of tortillas which is a food staple there. In West Bengal, there are erupting clashes over food rationing. In Senegal, Mauritania as well as in the further areas of Africa social unrests are rampant as the price of rice grains continuously go up. In Yemen, hundreds of children rallied and demonstrated in communities in order to cry out awareness towards the often overlooked subject of “child hunger”. All these events stand in stark contrast to what many customers have expected in the past decades, lower food prices.

February 13, the FAO released an announcement which stated that 36 countries were in crisis, a direct result of higher food prices and need external assistance from other countries. Call it bad luck but many of these countries didn’t just suffer from increased commodity prices due to an increase in oil pricing, they also suffered nature’s fury as well as conflict among its people.

Headlines often tell us of news about more increases in food commodity prices and though it is a comparatively current occurrence this upswing in the prices of essential commodities has already began in 2001. Food prices increase as a direct response to several factors such as higher energy and fertilizer prices, an increase in the need for biofuels specifically in the US and European Union, as well as the famine in Australia and other countries. World Grain Stocks have reached a record low and the prices for next year’s supply is depending on how successful the subsequent harvest in the northern hemisphere is.

To help you picture this, envision a family with low earnings that might have to pay about 20 cents for every kilogram of rice this year and then spend 30 cents on rice the following year but there isn’t any change with how much they earn. For people who spend half or more of what they earn on food alone, these increases would definitely be a big blow to their budgets. In Yemen, where they import about 2 million metric tons of wheat every year, clearly shows how an increase in food and oil prices can also increase poverty. Only after a year of profile price inflations which doubled wheat prices they already saw a significant change of 6 points in the country’s poverty statistics. In cases like this, it is the urban poor that suffer more as rural citizens are mostly sellers rather than buyers of food. But there could also be sever effects on rural folks especially if they are landless rural workers or farmers who rely solely on wages which may not be enough to accommodate the rise in food and oil prices.

David Jackson is an Internet Marketer and a driver concerned with the current rising gas prices around the World. So with all the essential information and powerful tools needed to help you lower your gas bill in running your car at the maximum fuel economy , can be found at Hydrogen Fuel Cells
http://hydrogencarfuel.blogspot.com/

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