Many have faulted Sen. Susan Collins’ habitual support of corporate power and greed, recognizing that her rare, much-ballyhooed exceptions offer only an illusion of moderation.

Robert Schaible’s excellent Dec. 17 letter (“Collins silent on climate crisis,” Page A4) gives the lie to Collins’ “moderate” ruse.

Denial of climate change and failure to join the necessary effort to forestall it now, before Earth becomes largely uninhabitable, to win campaign dollars from those who knowingly traded humanity’s future for short-term gain – for greed – places Collins in a camp with those who would squeeze more wealth out of the poison pill that kills and, as matters are going, are likely to kill us all – kill human life.

This is no time for blind party loyalty or self-interested deceit. It has been bad enough that Collins and other Maine senators and representatives have, to gain the votes of Loring Air Base, Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Shipyard workers, investors and surrounding merchants, voted consistently for whatever the Pentagon asks or a histrionic president adds to, resulting in a $1 billion-a-day military when we have faced no real military threat in living memory.

Besides that consummate waste, Collins and Sens. Bill Cohen, George Mitchell, Olympia Snowe and Angus King have given Israel billions annually to kill Palestinians needlessly and engage in constant repression, and we regularly grant Israel impunity for gross injustices and war crimes with ready U.N. Security Council vetoes.

Human survival is at stake, very largely because of extravagant U.S. carbon emissions over two centuries, and now Collins’ party’s insane refusal to join the common effort to minimize the damage – to save us.

William H. Slavick

Portland