The Cost of High Oil Prices
As a rule, Filipinos dread any increase in oil prices. Higher oil prices generally leads to higher prices for basic necessities like food, transportation and electricity. And with 30 percent of Filipinos living below the poverty line , who can blame us? On the other hand, I always thought that high oil prices can benefit the environment. High oil prices will lead to people cutting back on petroleum use, thus limiting emissions. High oil prices will also make alternative energy sources more competitive . Unfortunately, these are not the only consequences of high oil prices. In Canada, the Asian Wall Street Journal (March 27 edition, pages 22 and 23) is reporting that : "These (oil sand) deposits were once dismissed as 'unconventional' oil that couldn't be recovered economically. But now, thanks to rising global oil prices and improved technology, most oil-industry experts count oil sands as recoverable reserves" But recovering oil from oil sand has environm