Where in Tarnation Is the Global Perspective?

The last wave of tar balls that rolled ashore in Huntington Beach two weeks ago triggered a flood of memories about another place that I once called home.

Surf City has been my home since I moved to Orange County last September. And in many ways it resembles my home of 22 years--Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation perched seven miles above Venezuela in the southern Caribbean.

With a size of almost 2,000 square miles, Trinidad and Tobago is slightly larger than Rhode Island. Its population of 1.2 million people is about the same as New Mexico’s.

But the oil derricks that bob and flicker in the Pacific Ocean just three miles off Huntington Beach resemble the monstrous pieces of metal that comprise the oil platforms afloat in the Caribbean just off the coast of Trinidad.

And like Huntington Beach, where oil was once king, Trinidad and Tobago’s economic lifeblood are the remaining oil veins that spew out oil and gas from leagues beneath the ocean. The country’s economic well-being is tied to the revenues of the handful of American oil companies that operate the wells.

Fortunately, the pristine Caribbean beaches have not been tarnished by an oil spill of the magnitude--396,000 gallons--that fouled Huntington and Newport beaches in February.

Or have they?

During the cleanup of the Huntington Beach oil spill, a private company proposed spraying the slick with dispersants to sink the giant patches of floating crude to the bottom of the ocean. The Coast Guard vehemently opposed the proposal, saying dispersants are highly toxic and the submerged tar balls would inflict serious damage to the seabed and the delicate Bolsa Chica Wetlands.

Now, wait a minute, I thought. Isn’t it normal practice in Trinidad for the oil companies to attack a spill with dispersants before it reaches the beaches?

The only fallout are the few dead pelicans, sporadic surfacings of dead fish and the annoying black dots of tar balls that stick to your feet.

Beach-goers sometimes siphon gasoline from their cars or carry along bottles of kerosene to clean the gooey stuff from their skin.

Apart from the usual grumble, there are no major complaints. No one rushes off to sue the oil companies over the dead birds and fish. And the oil companies are never in a hurry to conduct damage control. Missing from these spills are the teams of public relations personnel who camp out on the beach and, of course, the army of workmen who wield their white pompons to dab away the gunk.

The alternative to a cleanup operation in Trinidad is always less expensive: wait until a few high tides wash ashore and swallow the goo back to sea. Total cleanup cost: nothing.

But the disparate actions of large corporations in dealing with developing countries is not restricted to the cleanup of oil spills. Greenpeace, the environmental group, has recently been lobbying Congress to force several companies to halt the sale of banned pesticides to developing countries.

“The circle of poison is coming back to haunt us,” Greenpeace spokeswoman Sandra Marquardt said. “Traces of never-registered pesticides sold (to developing countries) are making their way back to the United States in our coffee, fruits, vegetables and meat. We’re banning the pesticides here, but eating and importing it in our food from elsewhere. It’s coming full circle.”

My recollections of the tar balls and the flurry of Earth Day activities have brought home the point that environmental conservation can only be global, not local. Polluted air is not confined to polluted areas. The recent efforts to save the rain forests in the Amazon underscore the argument that only international action and cooperation could save the health of the planet.

Inaction is far too costly.