For a piece of truly fake news, try Congressman Peter DeFazio’s self-defense commentary (“DeFazio on Climate Change,” Nov. 29). Responding to a quote in Politico and a letter in the Eugene Weekly critical of his efforts to address climate change, DeFazio says he’s long “talked about carbon pollution and climate change as an existential threat to the planet” and touts his introduction of legislation 10 years ago to “cap, regulate and reduce carbon pollution.”

Apparently, DeFazio believes a bill he drafted six years ago, “The O&C Trust Conservation and Jobs Act — whose provisions would strip environmental safeguards for clean water and wildlife and result in 33 square miles of Oregon’s public forest lands clear-cut by private industry each year — has nothing to do with carbon pollution and would have no bearing on climate change.

Will the $500 billion he’ll be proposing as chair of the Transportation Committee for highways and transit be predominantly for electric and hydrogen vehicles on pavement made from something other than oil? 

Being better than Art Robinson is not good enough in the Anthropocene. As a social liberal, a labor Democrat beholden to timber interests, time and again in the face of environmental catastrophe DeFazio has shown that he is part of the problem, not its solution.

Time for the Weekly and its liberal readers to shed their denial and open their eyes: The emperor wears no clothes.

Robert Emmons

Fall Creek

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