U.S. Rep. Jared Golden has championed our lobster industry in its pleas to keep using traditional lobstering gear.

Of course our congressman understands that his advocacy is useless if there are no lobster to catch. He also knows that, due to climate change, the Gulf of Maine is warming three times faster than the oceans as a whole.

He knows that just as those warming temperatures have destroyed our once-plentiful cod stocks, they are driving the lobster ever farther out to sea, depleting the populations in the western Gulf of Maine already and throughout the gulf before long.

As this disaster unfolds — just one facet of the global climate catastrophe making headlines every day — the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is proposing a reckless energy bill, H.R. 1, that would eliminate the most basic restraints on the oil, gas and coal industries.

Congressman Golden should not just oppose pro-fossil fuel legislation like this. He should take the lead on climate change, and because he has strong connections on both sides of the aisle, he can do this: prevail on all his colleagues to join him in a serious study of the Summary for Policymakers of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report, just issued.

Our congresspeople are our policymakers, and it’s on them to figure out how the United States can do its part to achieve what the report says we need: “rapid, deep and in most cases immediate greenhouse gas emission reductions.”

James Parakilas, Lewiston

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