The Arctic is rapidly melting. Paul LePage and Angus King see this unfolding global tragedy as an unexpected and opportune silver lining for America. Senator King says it’s like “discovering a new ocean,” an energy rich “new frontier” to be “explored.” Governor LePage says that, instead of being at the “end of the pipeline,” this positions Maine “at the beginning of a new one,” providing favorable shipping lanes both east and west over the top of the world, advantageously linking Maine commerce to European and Asian markets.

If LePage’s optimistic logic works out, even Waterville might, eventually, find itself a bustling seaport as Maine’s existing ones become submerged maritime history. If that does happen, it will, according to our governor, not be due to human activity. For him, climate change, or, as he puts it, “formerly called global warming,” is simply something we must utilize as best we can.

Senator King, witnessing this environmental catastrophe up close and personal thanks to a recent nuclear submarine excursion, envisions new and ready access to coveted oil and gas reserves, previously inaccessible, and important strategic capabilities regarding China and Russia.

LePage’s economic take away, also shared by King, makes perfect sense. Finding opportunity in change is what leadership is all about. LePage’s lack of concern regarding the cause of such change remains troubling, but his reasoning nevertheless holds together. Never welcoming of sustainable alternatives — like wind power’s economic potential being value-added by addressing global warming impacts — if the Arctic’s demise is at hand, reasons LePage, let’s embrace the upside of a now irreversible reality. Myopic, but still of one mind.

King’s take away is far more disturbing and obtuse. Well beyond being a proponent, King is a wind power businessman who pragmatically embraces those political winds still advocating more extraction of what is causing an imperiled arctic. That emblematic polar bear on Bowdoin’s campus must be giving the hairy eyeball toward King’s residence only a few unendangered blocks away.

What is our environmentallysensitive senator independently thinking? I had hoped that he, unencumbered by party pressures, and likely serving for one term, would stand outside politics as usual and encourage acknowledgement of what even a 7th grade laptop user could readily inform themselves. Google truth clearly points out that enough oil reserves have already been tapped to achieve the final nail in the world’s coffin. If all that harvested oil is refined and utilized, our planet will be largely uninhabitable, tipped way beyond denial. More oil exploration is as pointless as developing more nuclear weaponry.

Unlike LePage, Angus King does believe in scientific fact and is an ardent supporter of environmental concerns. He passionately champions what he describes as the Maine Rototiller Rule: That you always return a borrowed tiller in has good shape as you received it, and that “we have this planet on loan from future generations.” I like that analogy, except that a rototiller is actually environmentally harmful. That is a minor, but telling, disconnect, like taking a nuclear submarine ride to the north pole. What environmental nightmare would ensue if that vessel’s carbon free propulsion suddenly turned south? The sub’s mission, of securing China and Russian containment, he lauds as a strategic necessity. King remains as unquestionably pro defense as he is pro environment, as if our military wasn’t the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels, and our “defense” posture wasn’t mostly about access to others’ finite energy sources.

If we were to abandon our fossil fuel economy yesterday, we would still be moving forward as a planet fatally flawed, irreparably assaulted by a mere 50 years of addictive blindness to what became apparent, early on, to those observant enough. All I hear today, about mending our environmental ways, sounds like so much ’70s restatement of the still earlier warnings of Maine’s own Rachael Carson. Let’s finally walk the walk.

Our political choices are all we have against a governance so impaired that any real environmental remedy remains distant. In this election cycle, much is made of LePage’s minority backed incompetence, but no one derides equally perplexing stances taken by a far more congenial and attractive politician who we overwhelmingly endorsed.

The planet, all well and good before unabated poisoning, is in need of protection only our elected officials can implement. Self flagellation and individual abstinence might mitigate guilt, but, evident by years of well intended futility, it doesn’t accomplish much. We need coordinated direction on all levels to take on what previous leadership abrogated.

Angus King’s good intentions provide little more guidance than our present governor. Unlike Le- Page, King was a popular governor, popular enough to cakewalk into national prominence rather than LePage’s national notoriety. Likability is a winning attribute, but still better is wise and consistent judgment. Choosing to endorse Susan Collins, a familiar, likable and formidable political force of conservatism — but not conservation — speaks volumes about King’s independent kinship to status quo positions Shenna Bellows would never embrace. That’s one shoe dropped pretty darn early. Now the question is: Who will be King’s gubernatorial choice?