Lesson: How Oil Prices Affect the Economy/ExerciseL1

Listening Exercise

<quiz display=simple> {Watch the video and complete the text according to what you can understand. |type="{}"}

You know, it seems like every time the { economy _7 } starts to get stronger, oil prices go up. Way up. And then the economy { struggles _9 } again. So what's the deal with freaking oil? Well you see, oil used to be a cheap and abundant { resource _8 }. So much so that crude oil created a byproduct called gasoline, which at one point was just considered { waste _5 }. So, we designed engines to run off that { gas _3 }. And this was the beginning of what we call the Second Industrial { Revolution _10 }, and it's a time of great economic growth. It made it so that most of our transportation and { distribution _12 } of goods is dependent on oil; 35% of United States energy comes from oil. We also grow our food and petrochemicals made from oil. { Construction _12 } materials are made from oil. In fact, Americans consume petroleum products at a rate of 3.5 gallons of oil per day. And that's not just in fuel. Here's a list of other things that we use that are { made _4 }from oil. Now, here's the problem: while there used to be { plenty _6 } of oil that was easy to get, today we've used a lot of it. But don't tell those tree-hugging, Earth-is-your-mother kind of { people _6 } freak out on you, because there's still a ton of oil left in the ground. In fact, arguably we haven't even hit peak oil yet. Meaning that there's still more oil left in the earth than what we've taken out. But here's the thing: Human { population _10 } is growing rapidly and certain countries like { China _5 } and India, who are largely { responsible _11 } for putting so many new people on this planet, are { becoming _8 } industrialized and using more and more oil. So, while there's lots of oil left to be sucked out of the earth, there's more and more people { consuming _9 } that oil. So, in the early 1900's when we first discovered oil, the amount of oil available per person was growing steadily until 1979. You see BP discovered in a study that it was that year that the amount of oil available per person on the planet peaked. And ever since then has been going down just as fast as it went up. In fact, for the past few decades we consume 3.5 barrels of oil for every new barrel we find. So, because of population growth, oil is going to become less { abundant _8 } and harder to get to… unless we could find a backup { planet _6 }. So, here's the real problem: when the economy is humming, we're { producing _9 } more, buying more, transporting more. So in turn, we use more oil, which makes the price go up, and since our { economy _7 } is based off of oil, the price of everything goes up. Which means the amount of things we can { afford _6 } to buy goes down, and that makes the economy slow down { again _5 }. In fact, every time we try to work ourselves out of a recession, we bring the price of oil back up with us, because it's the lifeblood of our economy. So, remember in July of 2008 when oil hit U$150 per barrel? Well that seems to be about as high as our economy can handle before { everything _10 } collapses. If we really want to see our economy { prosper _7 } again like before, we can't rely anymore on the Second Industrial Revolution. What we need is to build a new economy that's not dependent on oil. What we need is a New { Industrial _10 } Revolution.