Case

 Case Point Chapter 1.1 Scarcity, Choice, and cost

What Is Wrong With The Oil Productions?

Why is oil harmful? Petroleum or oil had come to the existence about four thousand years ago. Oil is now one of the required resources for every day's activities. For instance, products like mechanical engines, cars, cooking, tar for roads, etc. needs oil to function. Even though oil has many choices of how it can be produced, it is a scarce resource. As a scarce resource, oil is very limited and cannot be reproduced or recycled. As a result, there are many opportunity costs for producing oil. First of all, one of the opportunity costs for producing oil is a healthy environment. Second, large amount of expenditures or money is a big opportunity cost for the oil production. Lastly, animal lives are subjects for pitiful opportunity costs of the oil industry.

The disastrous opportunity cost for producing oil is the environmental enforcement. Many disastrous factors have appeared such as a health hazard, pollution, water contamination, loss of land, etc, due to oil production. For instance, Ecuador solely depends on oil production's revenue in order to build up their economy (Dabbs, 1). As a result, oil productions have harmed many indigenous tribes that live around areas of its production (e.g. Amazon region, eastern area of the country). It also contaminates the water around that area, which causes the risk of cancer, abortion, dermatitis, fungal infection, headaches, and nausea (Dabbs, 1). Oil drills also destroy the rainforests that around them during the process of oil production. Oil production in Ecuador alone has caused thousands of acres of trees to fall, which caused the Sierra highlands to be deforested (Dabbs, 1). Furthermore, there were large amounts of oil spills and abandoned toxic wastes that contaminate the local rivers and forest. For example, Texaco alone has spilled seventeen million gallons of oil alone (Dabbs, 1). In short, the downside of...