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and defecate in it. For generations, the swift current of the Amazon has been instrumental in survival. Oil drilling has disturbed this fragile ecosystem. Fish, a local staple, are not as plentiful as they once were.

While the oil companies have made an attempt to be responsible citizens, accidents happen. Environmental standards slip to levels not acceptable in the U.S.

Laws would not remedy this situation because poor people do not have recourse through the legal system, which in Peru is more iffy than in the U.S.

What is the answer, if any? If the oil companies provided housing and a clean water supply for displaced persons, this would help humanitarian concerns. Providing jobs for he locals is not likely to happen because the technology of oil drilling requires a certain amount of education, which is not available to the natives.

What we have here is the same old, same old. U.S. environmental standards, always tenuous, entangled in legal disputes of noncompliance, a tax burden to industry as well as citizens, have not produced a trouble-free environment. To export the laws of this bureaucracy is like trying to move a mountain into a tropical jungle.

The reliance on petroleum products in the modern world will not diminish in the near future. This is a fact. The reality is the Amazon jungle will be exploited as much as possible. But the laws of nature may have the last word. Tropical rain and heat will not consult the Amazon Chamber of Commerce, and the price of oil will reflect those natural elements that cant be controlled by man.

Poor and displaced natives will do what such persons have always done, they will scratch for existence. Occasionally, their photographs will appear on the U.S. evening news. There will be a temporary big flap. Then they will be forgotten as we drive off in a gas-guzzling SUV to watch a movie on saving the environment.
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