Oral blanc de préparation à l'épreuve de SES au bac européen
Classe de première ES


Preparation : 20 minutes
Oral exam : 10 minutes, 6-7 minutes to answer the question, and 3-4 minutes for discussion.

Using the document and your knowledge, make a structured answer to the following question, you must use examples studied in class.

Subject :

Should we let cars and oil being a free market?

(…)So why is it that in the US, where fuel is cheap, more than half of new car sales are of the inefficient sports utility vehicles, while in Europe they remain thankfully rare? Ford markets the 15 mpg Explorer in the US, the 50 mpg Ka in Europe. Is this a coincidence? Would the 80 mpg Toyota Prius have been introduced if petrol had been cheap
(…)
The problem is that at present we are net being given much choice. There are electric vehicles, but they are more expansive and have a lower range than petrol or diesel equivalents. Eventually there will be a bigger role for battery-powered vehicles, with fuel cells generating electricity on-board from hydrogen fuel. The more expansive oil products become, the more attractive these alternatives will appear. But clean new technologies do not obviate the need for high taxes on dirty old ones.
(…)
The truth is that we are car dependent because prices have been too low. Higher prices will eventually make us less dependent. This must be our aim because even the cleverest technology cannot overcome the physical intrusion of cars, the severing of communities, the accidents and the loss of land to more roads.
(…)
Greenpeace bas just commissioned a poll from NOP. Asked if fuel taxes were too high, 82 per cent said yes. This was predictable. Asked if they thought that high fuel prices made people drive less, a large majority said it made no difference They're wrong, but that doesn't help a government trying to win support for a tax. What could help this government is the finding that if more money were promised to fund public transport and develop alternative non-polluting fuels, 68 per cent said they would be happier paying high taxes. (…)
The real cost of public transport bas increased significantly in recent decades. As the left favours public over private provision, I am surprised that so many people in the Labour party seem unconcerned by the rapid increase in the cost of buses and trains, but view the right to cheap driving as a sacred principle.
(…)
Bill Ford, of the Ford motor company, says that while the price of fuel is cheaper than the price of bottled water, no one will be interested in more efficient vehicles. If a descendant of Henry Ford accepts a correlation between fuel prices and the vehicles people drive, (…)

Stephen Tindale
Chief policy adviser at Greenpeace UK
In Prospect, November 2000