ConocoPhillips recently came under fire at its annual shareholder meeting as environmental and human rights campaigners warned that its Peru plans could lead to the extinction of some of the Amazon basin’s last surviving indigenous groups still living in isolation. Groups like Amazon Watch fear that exposure to foreign oil workers could introduce diseases to the natives that their immune systems can not cope with, similar to the introduction of small pox by European explorers to the Western Hemisphere. Noble as this all sounds, recent article in Time suggests that the biggest concern natives have to worry about are not diseases or oil production, but instead by clearing away rainforests to allow for ethanol harvesting. But you see, ethanol is GOOD, so that's not a cause for affecting indigenous peoples. It's okay if you destroy the forest in the name of a good fuel. Plus the greenhouse gas. Yeah, knocking down all the trees to plant the oil rigs looks bad, but do we not forget that nature eventually reclaims the land we humans once took from it? Seriously now, companies like Conoco usually have to sign contracts requiring that they commit to replanting forests anyway. As long as oil companies are being forced to display empty gestures to make them look more environmentally friendly then humanly possible, I suggest oil companies develop a multi-purpose biosuit for their field workers, not unlike radiation suits, or chemical suits, or whatever kept Howard Hughes alive all those years. We'd have happy workers going about in their spaceman suits, moving stiffly and ungainly around their oil rigs, but not, mind you, not spewing out harmful diseases. The slogan for this new program can read: "ConocoPhillips: We make our employees dress in this ridiculous way to pacify your irrational insecurities." –Stephen Payne, Editor, Oil and Gas Investor This Week; spayne@hartenergy.com