Pipeline Pete

Don Heady (Letters, 8/15) found me “disingenuous” (Viewpoint, 8/1) for saying Rep. Peter DeFazio is abetting the climate crisis. Here is what’s disingenuous: Saying you are a great environmentalist, yet taking money from corporations that are destroying the environment and our children’s future with it.

DeFazio refuses to oppose the Jordan Cove Energy Project (fracked-gas pipeline and export terminal) in southern Oregon. He also refuses to oppose the health, safety, property rights violations and ecological destruction this project will cause to 400 rivers and streams, 32 endangered species, old growth public forest and the taking of more than 300 Oregonians’ land by eminent domain. The project will emit a half-million more tons of greenhouse gases in a year than the coal plant we are closing in Boardman.

Why won’t DeFazio oppose this dangerous project planned in a tsunami and earthquake subduction zone? Let his “track record” speak for itself: contributions from Jordan Cove LLC, Northwest Natural Gas, PG&E and Transcanada, to name a few.

It’s this kind of leadership that has gotten us to this place. We need new thinkers, new leaders. “Business as usual” is killing us!

Deb McGee

Eugene