SEEING THE FOREST

THROUGH THE TREES?

Vast areas throughout western North America are experiencing large areas of various species mortality in coniferous forests. Due to drought-stress/bug kills, all caused by the warming climate. It's been shocking and very sad for your lead author to visit some areas I haven't been in for 10 or more years, when I lived in Montana and worked more throughout the western lower 48 on wildfires, seeing the drastic changes. In southern Utah, east of Cedar City, vast stands of lodgepole pine above 2750 metres elevation (9000 ft) are completely dead, and so far, no new growth has taken their place. Around Stanley, Idaho at 2000 metres elevation (6600 ft.), 1/3 to 1/2 of all the standing timber of the cooler species, subalpine fir, englemann spruce, and lodgepole pine, are also dead. I also observed this near Polebridge, Montana which is on the western edge of Glacier National Park, at elevations of 1000-1830 metres (3300-6000 ft). In addition, huge expanses of the higher-elevation stands of lodgepole pine in central and southern British Columbia have died off over the past 25 years and are standing dead timber/snags now. Further north, into the Yukon, and Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, large expanses of white spruce have also died off and are standing dead, waiting for our increasingly large wildfire seasons to bring them down.

This is because the warming climate has reduced mountain snowpacks overall, hastened their melting in spring, and brought drier summers. Causing drought stress, lowering the ability of many species of trees to resist diseases and fight off bug infestations. In addition, warmer winter temperatures overall, allow more bark-beetles and spruce budworms to survive each season, leading to greater numbers of them, and in longer warm seasons, to even have two breeding/infestation cycles in the trees. All this has taken it's toll, and given that the magnitude of warming will be greatly increasing in the coming decades, we "ain't seen nothin' yet", unfortunately.

In generally ever-moist Southeast Alaska though, it's not drought and bug-kill causing significant tree die-offs in a beautiful and important species, Alaska Yellow-Cedar (which also occurs in large areas on the western slopes of the Cascades of OR/WA and coast ranges of BC), but dwindling winter snowpacks, leading to increasing frost-penetration of the ground when cold spells occur. Give this interesting article a read, we learned quite a bit.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112467261/yellow-cedar-are-dying-in-alaska-scientists-now-know-why/
 Yellow-cedar Are Dying In Alaska: Scientists Now Know Why

February 2, 2012

Yellow-cedar, a culturally and economically valuable tree in southeastern Alaska and adjacent parts of British Columbia, has been dying off across large expanses of these areas for the past 100 years. But no one could say why—until now.

“The cause of tree death, called yellow-cedar decline, is now known to be a form of root freezing that occurs during cold weather in late winter and early spring, but only when snow is not present on the ground,” explains Pacific Northwest Research Station scientist Paul Hennon, co-lead of a synthesis paper recently published in the February issue of the journal BioScience. “When present, snow protects the fine, shallow roots from extreme soil temperatures. The shallow rooting of yellow-cedar, early spring growth, and its unique vulnerability to freezing injury also contribute to this problem.”

Yellow-cedar decline affects about 60 to 70 percent of trees in forests covering 600,000 acres in Alaska and British Columbia. The paper, “Shifting Climate, Altered Niche, and a Dynamic Conservation Strategy for Yellow-Cedar in the North Pacific Coastal Rainforest,” summarizes 30 years of research and offers a framework for a conservation strategy for yellow-cedar in Alaska.
Some key findings include:

- The complex cause of yellow-cedar decline is related to reduced snow, site and stand characteristics, shallow rooting, and the unique vulnerability of the roots to freezing in low temperatures.
- Low snow levels and poor soil drainage lead to impact root injury and the eventual death of yellow-cedar trees. The tree thrives in wet soils, but its tendency to produce shallow roots to access nitrogen on these sites made it more vulnerable when spring snow levels were reduced by climate warming.
- Yellow-cedar health depends on changing snow patterns, thus locations for appropriate conservation and management activities need to follow the shifting snow patterns on the landscape.
- Some responses to shifting climate are expected to be complex and difficult to anticipate. Long-term multidisciplinary research was needed to determine the true role of climate in the health of yellow-cedar and untangle it from other processes and natural cycles in forests.

The yellow-cedar is a slow-growing tree; many are 700 to 1,200 years old. The tree has long been culturally significant to Native Alaskans who use it to make paddles, masks, dishes, and woven items. The wood is also very valuable commercially (for home and boat building) because of its straight grain, durability, and resistance to insects.

Attention is now directed toward a solution to protect and manage yellow-cedar, as coastal Alaska is expected to experience less snow but a persistence of periodic cold weather events in the future.
Scientists are working with partners in the Alaska Region of the Forest Service to use this new information as the framework for a comprehensive conservation strategy for yellow-cedar in Alaska in the context of a changing climate.

“We also have ongoing projects with colleagues in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska on planting and thinning to favor yellow-cedar on suitable habitat,” adds co-lead author and station scientist Dave D’Amore “especially on well-drained productive soils where most of the commercial forestry exits. Silvicultural techniques can be used to nudge the ecological niche of yellow-cedar, making it more competitive on these favorable sites.”

Other coauthors of the synthesis are Paul Schaberg, U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station; Dustin Wittwer, U.S. Forest Service, Alaska Region; and Colin Shanley, The Nature Conservancy.

Image Caption: Yellow-cedar in West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness Area, a pristine area of coastal Alaska, faces intensive mortality. Photo: Paul Hennon

Source: USDA Forest Service - Pacific Northwest Research Station

Winter snowpacks are dwindling at the lower elevations in Southeast Alaska because there are more frequent, persistent, and stronger high pressure ridging episodes throughout the year, but especially in winter, which move masses of warm air northward from the sub-tropics and mid-latitudes. Which we've described in several previous articles.

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2011/05/fahrenheit-2051.html

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2010/11/dont-need-weatherman-and-matties-fourth.html

With the magnitude of warming expected to triple or quadruple over the next 40 years in Alaska, from that seen over the last 40, due to our increasing CO2 and Methane emissions, we therefore expect these patterns to become even stronger and more persistent. Thus, Yellow-Cedar forests will continue to die off at the lower elevations in Southeast Alaska. And for those of us living in South-Central Alaska, it means stronger and more frequent windstorms will occur throughout the year, with strong, damaging winds and dangerous turbulence for aviation. These will occur more often especially in the fall/winter/spring, along with more freezing rain episodes in winter.

We came across another article lately describing the increasing trends in wildfires expected, as climate warming continues apace. We thought it very worthwhile and worthy of sharing, and have some things to add to it. We've already written several articles here at the A.P.R., presenting our views of this important topic, of which our favourite is this:

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/03/warning-lights-are-flashing-australia.html

Nevertheless, it's always refreshing when we come across research which reinforces our findings, and in this case, we have some real, first-hand experience to discuss. Give this a read, and then we'll provide some commentary.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/27-2
There Will Be Fire: The 'Carbon Bomb' 'Waiting to Be Ignited'

Scientist: With climate change fires will become more frequent, more intense and harder to stop.

“We are going to see more fire in (the) future, that’s the bottom line.” “A warmer world’s going to see more fire.”

photo: John McColgan of the Alaskan Type I Incident Management Team (Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service)This eery warning comes from Mike Flannigan, a senior research scientist with Natural Resources Canada and professor at the University of Alberta, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He says that fires will become more frequent, more intense and harder to stop.

Flannigan's "conservative estimate" states there would be two to three times more fire activity in the northern hemisphere by the end of the century.
“If a fire is intense, aerial suppression is no longer effective, so even modern fire management agencies, like Canada, the United States and Australia — among the best in the world — will be extremely challenged,” he said.
“I would argue that the standard way of doing fire management will no longer be effective in the future. And that doesn’t even begin to address many parts of the globe where they have traditional fire-suppression approaches, which will be completely overwhelmed."

“So the risk to life and infrastructure is only going to increase under climate change.”

Flannigan added that peat fires are also expected to dramatically raise greenhouse gas emissions, Postmedia News reports:

If more wildfires were not bad enough, Flannigan said the warming climate means peat lands, which contain vast stores of carbon, are also more likely to ignite and release greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions could in turn “feed” more warming and more fire.

A 1997 fire in Indonesia ignited peat lands that smouldered for months. By the time it was over, Flannigan said the peat fire had released greenhouse gases equal to 20 to 40 per cent of the total worldwide emissions that year from fossil fuels.

Peat fires in the boreal could have the potential to release far more greenhouse gases. “Our peat reserves in Canada, Russia and Alaska dwarf anything in Indonesia,” he said in an interview.

Inter Press Service reports that one researcher referred to the northern forest as a “carbon bomb” "waiting to be ignited:"

When the increased fire from global warming was first detected in 2006, Johann Goldammer of the Global Fire Monitoring Center at Germany’s Freiburg University called the northern forest a “carbon bomb”.

“It’s sitting there waiting to be ignited, and there is already ignition going on,” Goldammer said according to media reports in 2006.

Inter Press Service continues:

About half the world’s soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils, said Merritt Turetsky, an ecologist at Canada’s University of Guelph. This carbon has been accumulating for thousands of years, but fires can release much of this into the atmosphere rapidly, Turetsky said in a release.

Over the past 10 years, fires are burning far more boreal forest than ever before. Longer snow-free seasons, melting permafrost and rising temperatures are large-scale changes underway in the north, Turetsky and colleagues have found.

Other researchers have shown that the average size of forest fires in the boreal zone of western Canada has tripled since the 1980s. Much of Canada’s vast forest region is approaching a tipping point, warned researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany’s largest research organisation.

This “drastic change” in normal fire pattern has occurred with a only a small increase in temperatures relative to future temperatures, the German researchers concluded in a study published in the December 2011

We think this last paragraph is the most important. Which is to say, the warming that has already occurred due to our releases of CO2 and Methane over the last 40 years will be 3-4 times greater over the next 4-6 decades, since there isn't, and will not likely be any, concerted global effort to reign emissions in within the next 10 to 20 years (hopefully not any longer than that!).

Your lead author found the preceding article very interesting as well, because I was a witness to the actual site and time that the photo in it was taken. This famous picture of elk seeking refuge in the West Fork of the Bitterroot River whilst fire burns on the slopes behind occurred on the Valley Complex wildfire, near Darby, Montana, in the summer of 2000. I served as an "Incident Meteorologist" from 8/06 to 8/20 that year on that fire, which eventually burned nearly 121,500 hectares (300,000 acres), providing forecasting support for the suppression team. In fact, the very day (and moment) I arrived at the Valley Complex incident base,  the fire "blew up", and 29,600 hectares (73,000 acres) burned in 4 hours, which turned out to be the fourth biggest ever "blow up" fire in the Northern Rockies history.

This happened because the fire moved into a large area of dead and downed trees from bug-kills and wind damage, and took off. The sound of the 60 kph inflow winds feeding the monstrous plume, which we could not see the top of from our vantage a few km away (and which we later estimated reached at least 20 km height), sounded like the roar of a freight train as it whipped through camp and into the fire. Truly frightening. This plume spread smoke into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, and tracked across the entirety of North America, and out into the Atlantic.

My fourteen days of duty there, working 15-18 hours daily, with poor sleep due to the often thick smoke and noisy, chaotic conditions, left me sick for a month afterward, with a low-grade, nagging bronchitis. The smoke accumulations in the valleys of the region, during this wildfire were often extremely hazardous to health. Visibilities were sometimes as limited to as little as 100-200 metres, and every inhalation felt like a cigarette draw. At one point, after a few exceptionally bad days, I nearly had a panic attack at night, feeling as though I were suffocating or drowning. What calmed me was realising that the other 3000 people working there, and the several thousand residents in the nearby area, were also undergoing the same thing.

I also first noticed something new in the daily weather, that summer of 2000. Which were very low relative humidity minimums by day and recoveries at night on the mid-slopes, which are warmer and drier at night due to drainage flows. They were only recovering to 20%, or even a little less, on many nights after being in the singled digits during the day. I had never seen air-masses that dry in Montana before, when I lived and worked there from 1990-94. So all the dead fuels on the forest floors, and live fuels, were exceedingly dry, and in the right conditions, led to firestorm severity where running crown fires consumed everything, and even fused the soil to hard, glassy surfaces in some areas. Which became very dangerous for flash flooding later. It was at this time I actually realised the climate was changing, and mentioned this to one of the Fire Behaviour Analysts I was working with, who was in agreement. With high pressure ridging episodes becoming stronger overall, as climate warming continues, the subsident, or sinking air in them, has become drier, and this was the first year I realised this.

This satellite image from one of those days, 14 August, 2000, shows smoke filling all the valleys in Central Idaho and Western Montana. The Valley Complex was under the very large area of smoke covering the Bitterroot Valley. These conditions, where visibilities in trapped smoke can at times be only a 100 or 200 metres, are exceedingly hazardous. Medical research has established that the finest particulates in heavy smoke, 2.5 micrometers or less in size, and which are the most prevalent, become lodged in the bronchial tubes of the lungs for quite some time, as long as many months. During this time, the heart has to work harder, to pump more oxygen, since the lungs are rendered less efficient, like a dirty air filter. Thus, those with pre-existing respiratory and/or cardiac conditions have an enhanced risk of serious complications. Likewise infants under the age of two, whose lungs are still newly developing, are more sensitive than average, healthy adults.

During my 14 day stretch, there were about 8 of these exceptionally unhealthy days, where the thick smoke from the Valley Complex, and others in the area, was trapped by the diurnal cooling/inversions in the large valleys. Everyone working there, and living there was under great strain. I mention this, because these kind of conditions will be occurring more frequently in fire/smoke-prone areas, in the coming decades. Eastern Washington/Eastern Oregon, Idaho/Western Montana, Southern Oregon/all of California, and the higher elevations of the four-corners states have already been seeing more of this over the past 15 years, with the magnitude of warming that has occurred. Interior Alaska and the Yukon are also highly susceptible to this unfortunate pattern.

 In large fire years there over the past decade, such as 2002, 2004-5, and 2009, heavy smoke accumulations plagued the most heavily-populated areas like the Tanana Valley (above, 2004-Fairbanks and environs) and Upper Yukon drainage (Whitehorse area) for days to weeks at a time from June through August.

As our plot of Fairbanks summer average temperatures (representing the Alaska Interior) versus annual wildfire acreages show, there is a high correlation between the two, and both show increasing trends. I haven't plotted 2011, it was very low, 117,450 hectares (292,000 acres), much less than the seasonal mean of 368,550 hectares (910,000 acres). What will 2012 bring? Cheers.

ACID TEST

Even without the threat that global warming/climate change that is amplifying as emissions of CO2 and Methane increase every year from fossil-fuel combustion, the changes in seawater chemistry that the addition of the higher CO2 inputs is causing is just as great. And needs to be publicised more, so people understand just how important and grave a threat ocean acidification poses to planetary well-being and future generations quality of life. As usual, with most global warming and significant environmental issues, the US corporate media gives them very little attention, if not in many cases, providing deliberately false and understated information. We thought this article from the BBC was very interesting and enlightening.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17088154

'Jacuzzi vents' model CO2 future
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Vancouver

At these volcanic vent sites, carbon dioxide bubbles up like a Jacuzzi

A UK scientist studying volcanic vents in the ocean says they hold a grave warning for future marine ecosystems.

These vents have naturally acidified waters that hint at how our seas might change if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. They are conditions that would make it harder for corals and similar organisms to make the hard parts in their bodies.

Dr Jason Hall-Spencer's work suggests our oceans could lose perhaps 30% of their biodiversity this century.

The Plymouth University researcher has been presenting his latest findings to a major conference in Vancouver, Canada.

"I am investigating underwater volcanoes where carbon dioxide bubbles up like a Jacuzzi, acidifying large areas of the seabed, and we can see at these vents which types of organisms are able to thrive and which ones are most vulnerable," he told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Dr Hall-Spencer treats the vents like a time machine. As he swims towards them, the pH level of the water falls and he can use particular locations to simulate what the open ocean will be like in the decades ahead if emissions of atmospheric CO2 go unchecked and much of the that gas is absorbed into the sea [which is certain unless people world-wide can stop the corporate juggernaut bent on destroying the planet for short-term profit, eds.].

"What we see as you swim along a gradient of carbon dioxide, up to levels we expect for the end of this century, is diversity loss.

"As you go along that gradient, species drop out of the system," he told BBC News.

"It's not all calcified species - ones with hard shells or skeletons - which drop out; there are other organisms with soft bodies which drop out as well.

"This CO2 is a stressor. Some organisms can adapt but there're only a few species that can handle it. If I extend the gradient up to the year 2100 - that represents a 30% loss in biodiversity."

ACIDIFYING OCEANS

• The oceans are thought to have absorbed up to half of the extra CO2 put into the atmosphere in the industrial age
• This has lowered their pH by 0.1
• pH is the measure of acidity and alkalinity
• It ranges from pH 0 (very acidic) to pH 14 (very alkaline); 7 is neutral
• Seawater is mildly alkaline with a "natural" pH of about 8.2
• The IPCC forecasts that ocean pH will fall by "between 0.14 and 0.35 units over the 21st Century, adding to the present decrease of 0.1 units since pre-industrial times"

At the end of last year, Dr Hall-Spencer published his findings on one volcanic vent site off Ischia Island near Vesuvius. But at this meeting, he reported soon-to-be-published data gathered at other volcanic vents in Europe, Baja California and Papua New Guinea. They all show the same outcomes as at Ischia.

"What's strange is that we see some organisms really up-regulate their physiology to try to cope with conditions - they grow faster. But it's like us panting for oxygen at high altitude - they're struggling.

"And in the summer, when temperatures are high, these organisms that are struggling just die. And that's very problematic because of course carbon dioxide not only acidifies seawater, but it is increasing the temperature of the atmosphere [and the seawater, eds]. And those two things combined are a double whammy."

Shells, like this Hexaplex trunculus, dissolve at CO2 levels predicted for later this century

The world's oceans have already absorbed a third to a half of the CO2 produced by humans, principally by the burning of fossil fuels, over the past 200 years.

This has resulted in a reduction of the pH of seawater by 0.1 units on the 14-point scale. If emissions of CO2 continue to rise as forecast, there could be another drop in pH up to perhaps 0.4 units by 2100.

These are changes that are occurring far too fast for the oceans to correct naturally, said Dr Richard Feely with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)

"Fifty-five million years ago when we had an event like this (and that took over 10,000 years to occur), it took the oceans over 125,000 years to recover, just to get the chemistry back to normal," he told BBC News.

"It took two to 10 million years for the organisms to re-evolve, to get back into a normal situation.

"So what we do over the next 100 years or 200 years can have implications for ocean ecosystems from tens of thousands to millions of years. That's the implication of what we're doing to the oceans right now."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Unfortunately for the higher latitudes seas and oceans in the Arctic, like the Bering, Beaufort, Chukchi, etc.., ocean acidification will be even more of a problem, and sooner than in the tropics and mid-latitudes because "... Polar seas are considered particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification because the high solubility of CO₂ in cold waters results in naturally low carbonate saturation states. CO₂ induced acidification will easily render these waters sub-saturated, where seawater becomes corrosive for calcareous organisms. By the time atmospheric CO₂ exceeds 490 parts per million (2040 to 2050, depending on the scenario considered), more than half of the Arctic Ocean is projected to be corrosive to aragonite. Arctic waters are home to a wide range of calcifying organisms, both in benthic and pelagic habitats, including shell fish, seas urchins, coralline algae, and calcareous plankton. Many of these are key species providing crucial links in the Arctic food web, such as the planktonic pteropods, which serve as food for fishes, seabirds and whales."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100603092018.htm

If the base of the marine food chain in the Arctic, and eventually waters further south, collapses, so too will populations of the larger species in the food webs in these areas. Collapses in marine food webs would have great ramifications for land-based ones, as well as decreasing the CO2 uptake by small marine creatures such as phytoplankton, allowing even more CO2 to build up in the atmosphere/oceans, leading to more warming, etc... Another positive feedback mechanism.

But because the global (not just US and western European) financial and industrial corporate sectors are only interested in perpetual growth and short-term profit, these changes are going to occur. Scientists across the globe understand what the threats are, and are even beginning to speak in more holistic terms about the changes that are needed in socio-political-economic systems, as this article well illustrates.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/20-5

'Perpetual Growth Myth' Leading World to Meltdown: Experts

UN-Sponsored Papers Predict Sustained Ecological and Social Meltdown

- Common Dreams staff

"The current system is broken," says Bob Watson, the UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues and a winner of the prestigious Blue Planet prize in 2010. "It is driving humanity to a future that is 3-5°C warmer than our species has ever known, and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth and senses of self."

Smoke billows from burned trees. A collective of scientists and development thinkers have warned that civilisation faces an 'unprecedented emergency'. (Photograph: CRISTINA QUICKLER/AFP/Getty Images)

"We cannot assume that technological fixes will come fast enough. Instead we need human solutions. The good news is that they exist but decision makers must be bold and forward thinking to seize them."

Watson's comments accompanied a new paper released today by 20 past winners of the Blue Planet Prize - often called the Nobel Prize for the environment, and comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Rio+20 conference – which takes place in June this year – where world leaders will (it is hoped) seize the opportunity to set human development on a new, more sustainable path.

Civilization Faces 'Perfect Storm of Ecological and Social Problems'

The Guardian's John Vidal reports:

 In the face of an "absolutely unprecedented emergency", say the [...] past winners of the Blue Planet prize – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has "no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us".

The stark assessment of the current global outlook by the group, who include [Watson]... US climate scientist James Hansen, Prof José Goldemberg, Brazil's secretary of environment during the Rio Earth summit in 1992, and Stanford University Prof Paul Ehrlich. [...]

"The perpetual growth myth ... promotes the impossible idea that indiscriminate economic growth is the cure for all the world's problems, while it is actually the disease that is at the root cause of our unsustainable global practices"

Apart from dire warnings about biodiversity loss and climate change, the group challenges governments to think differently about economic "progress".
"The rapidly deteriorating biophysical situation is more than bad enough, but it is barely recognized by a global society infected by the irrational belief that physical economies can grow forever and disregarding the facts that the rich in developed and developing countries get richer and the poor are left behind."
The group warns against over-reliance on markets but instead urges politicians to listen and learn from how poor communities all over the world see the problems of energy, water, food and livelihoods as interdependent and integrated as part of a living ecosystem. 

The paper urges governments to:

• Replace GDP as a measure of wealth with metrics for natural, built, human and social capital - and how they intersect.
• Eliminate subsidies in sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture that create environmental and social costs, which currently go unpaid.
• Tackle over-consumption, and address population pressure by empowering women, improving education and making contraception accessible to all.
• Transform decision making processes to empower marginalized groups, and integrate economic, social and environmental policies instead of having them compete.
• Conserve and value biodiversity and ecosystem services, and create markets for them that can form the basis of green economies.
• Invest in knowledge - both in creating and in sharing it - through research and training that will enable governments, business, and society at large to understand and move towards a sustainable future.

“Sustainable development is not a pipe dream,” says Dr Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development. “It is the destination the world’s accumulated knowledge points us towards, the fair future that will enable us to live with security, peace and opportunities for all. To get there we must transform the ways we manage, share and interact with the environment, and acknowledge that humanity is part of nature not apart from it.”

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “The paper by the Blue Planet laureates will challenge governments and society as a whole to act to limit human-induced climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in order to ensure food, water energy and human security. I would like to thank Professor Watson and colleagues for eloquently articulating their vision on how key development challenges can be addressed, emphasizing solutions; the policies, technologies and behavior changes required to grow green economies, generate jobs and lift people out of poverty without pushing the world through planetary boundaries.”
***

A second UNEP report was also released today in Kenya. Though separate from the assessment of the Planet Blue laureates, it echoes many of their themes and concerns.

Capital FM News in Kenya reports:

A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned of a continued deterioration in the state of the global environment due to failure by governments to implement internationally agreed goals.

The summary report released at the sidelines of a UNEP Governing Council meeting in Nairobi stated that out of the 90 internationally agreed goals, only 40 were in progress, 32 had insufficient progress while 13 were not in development at all.

“We have failed to meet agreed goals,” Peter Gilruth Director Division of Early Warning Assessment (DEWA) UNEP said.

“The internationally agreed goal of avoiding the adverse effects of climate change is presenting the global community with one of its most serious challenges that is threatening overall development goals,” he noted.

He added that the rate at which forest loss, particularly in the tropics was taking place remained alarmingly high.

“Today, 80 percent of the world’s population live in areas with high levels of threat to water security, affecting 3.4 billion people mostly in developing countries,” he stated.

The Fifth Global Environment Outlook (GEO 5) assessed progress and gaps in the implementation of internationally agreed goals on environment and the full report would be released in June ahead of the Rio+20 Summit on sustainable development.

The report recommended that policy makers focus on the underlying drivers of environmental change such as the negative aspects of population growth, consumption and production, urbanisation rather than just concentrating on reducing environmental pressures or symptoms.

Unfortunately, in the US and now even in western Europe, the "Corporatocracy" continues to accelerate it's drive to push back socio-political and economic systems/models to that not seen since around 1900, erasing the gains of the labour, environmental, and even women's rights movements in pursuit of short-term profits. When completely unregulated capitalism kept average working people living in misery, toiling 60-80 hours a week for abysmal pay in unsafe conditions (which of course is how most modern conveniences are still made in "third World" countries today), whilst creating terrible pollution and unsafe food/water and drugs. But in 1900, the global population was only 1.6 billion, and now it is 7 billion, and may be 9-10 billion by 2050! We don't think it takes rocket scientists to understand how serious a situation humanity faces in the decades ahead, unless we are able to change our societies to ones that are not focused on corporate profit, but on meeting the needs of people, and protecting/sustaining the environment. For us here at the Alaska Progressive Review, that means supporting/voting for Green, or other alternative party politicians, at all levels. Supporting the Occupy and other movements working for positive changes as well, as they continue to highlight the problems we are facing. We'll also be focusing our attention and research to write about new developments in alternative energy and environmental science issues. Cheers. 

WHAT'S STOPPING US

Law Professor Bill Quigley, who teaches at Loyola University, in New Orleans published this beautiful essay a few days ago. The Alaska Progressive review found it quite moving, and is in complete agreement with everything he's laid out here.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13284

BILL QUIGLEY FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967

ne. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights. No application needed. No exclusions at all. This is our highest priority.

Two. We must radically reinvent contemporary democracy. Current systems are deeply corrupt and not responsive to the needs of people. Representatives chosen by money and influence govern by money and influence. This is unacceptable. Direct democracy by the people is now technologically possible and should be the rule. Communities must be protected whenever they advocate for self-determination, self-development and human rights. Dissent is essential to democracy; we pledge to help it flourish.

Three. Corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights. Amend the US Constitution so it is clear corporations do not have constitutional or human rights. We the people must cut them down to size and so democracy can regulate their size, scope and actions.

Four. Leave the rest of the world alone. Cut US military spending by 75 percent and bring all troops outside the US home now. Defense of the US is a human right. Global offense and global police force by US military are not. Eliminate all nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. Stop allowing scare tactics to build up the national security forces at home. Stop the myth that the US is somehow special or exceptional and is entitled to act differently than all other nations. The US must re-join the global family of nations as a respectful partner. USA is one of many nations in the world. We must start acting like it.

Five. Property rights, privilege, and money-making are not as important as human rights. When current property and privilege arrangements are not just they must yield to the demands of human rights. Money-making can only be allowed when human rights are respected. Exploitation is unacceptable. There are national and global poverty lines. We must establish national and global excess lines so that people and businesses with extra houses, cars, luxuries, and incomes share much more to help everyone else be able to exercise their basic human rights to shelter, food, education and healthcare. If that disrupts current property, privilege and money-making, so be it.

Six. Defend our earth. Stop pollution, stop pipelines, stop new interstates, and stop destroying the land, sea, and air by extracting resources from them. Rebuild what we have destroyed. If corporations will not stop voluntarily, people must stop them. The very existence of life is at stake.

Seven. Dramatically expand public spaces and reverse the privatization of public services. Quality public education, health and safety for all must be provided by transparent accountable public systems. Starving the state is a recipe for destroying social and economic human rights for everyone but the rich.

Eight. Pull the criminal legal prison system up and out by its roots and start over. Cease the criminalization of drugs, immigrants, poor people and people of color. We are all entitled to be safe but the current system makes us less so and ruins millions of lives. Start over.

Nine. The US was created based on two original crimes that must be confessed and made right. Reparations are owed to Native Americans because their land was stolen and they were uprooted and slaughtered. Reparations are owed to African Americans because they were kidnapped, enslaved and abused. The US has profited widely from these injustices and must make amends.

Ten. Everyone who wants to work should have the right to work and earn a living wage. Any workers who want to organize and advocate for change in solidarity with others must be absolutely protected from recriminations from their employer and from their government.

Finally, if those in government and those in power do not help the people do what is right, people seeking change must together exercise our human rights and bring about these changes directly. Dr. King and millions of others lived and worked for a radical revolution of values. We will as well. We respect the human rights and human dignity of others and work for a world where love and wisdom and solidarity and respect prevail. We expect those for whom the current unjust system works just fine will object and oppose and accuse people seeking dramatic change of being divisive and worse. That is to be expected because that is what happens to all groups which work for serious social change. Despite that, people will continue to go forward with determination and purpose to bring about a radical revolution of values in the USA.

---

Bill Quigley is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.

These are the basic aims we support and work for, here at the Alaska Progressive Review. There are a few countries still in existence, that have the highest standards of living, highest life expectancies, most educated populace, most generous national healthcare systems, and employment benefits (minimum wages, vacation, parental leave, etc...). The Nordic countries, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. And, countries which we feel quite attracted to, because of their similar environment and climate, to ours, here in South-Central Alaska. How were they able to develop these countries in which every worker, no matter how new or uneducated, receives a month vacation every year. With minimum wages that are actually liveable, albeit simply. Where if you are unemployed and jobs scarce or non-existent, benefits don't run out, while training for other vocations can be undertaken. Where national health care programmes profide all citizens the best quality and quantity necessary of the most modern health care, without causing people to become bankrupt, even those with insurance, as happens frequently in the U.S.

How did the people of these countries do it? After all, they weren't always this way, at the top of all the World's countries in most measures of quality of life. This article explains how they did, quite some time ago, before World War II, in the 1920s and 1930s.

 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-3

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’

by George Lakey

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.A march in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbro will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.

Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.

In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)

The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent.

When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena.

In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.

The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!

The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and boycotts in 1928.

The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.

Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt.

By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side.

This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)

The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)

Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.

Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

George Lakey is Visiting Professor at Swarthmore College and a Quaker. He has led 1,500 workshops on five continents and led activist projects on local, national, and international levels. Among many other books and articles, he is author of “Strategizing for a Living Revolution” in David Solnit’s book Globalize Liberation (City Lights, 2004). His first arrest was for a civil rights sit-in and most recent was with Earth Quaker Action Team while protesting mountain top removal coal mining.

That's a very inspiring description of what the people of Norway and Sweden went through, to obtain their "enviable" lifestyles and standards of living, which could be extended to any or all nations on Earth, if the peoples of them so desired (with modifications for environmental concerns and sustainability, which will have to be undertaken by every nation in the coming decades).

So what's stopping us, here in the United States, from being able to come together in a strong unified majority of people, to force beneficial changes (to this and all nations) like the ones that occurred in the Nordic countries, as well as other social democracies like Australia, New Zealand, and all of Western Europe? 

Racism. Pure and simple. It's quite obvious when you look objectively at how the Republican Party has managed to continue to compel caucasian U.S. citizens to continually vote against their interests, especially in the Southeastern states and rural areas throughout the nation. The legacy of slavery and the destruction of the Indigenous peoples on this continent still haunts this country, and must be acknowledged and dealt with.

When you look at those other countries that have social democracies, they all developed them when they were unified culturally, so that they had more in common, and felt more empathy overall, to each other.

The U.S. still as a whole, that is, enough of it's citizens, are not able to trust and empathise with those that they perceive as different. And thus, the Republican politicians use that, not quite overtly (but increasingly so), to manipulate them. And, in the past 20 years especially, have forced the Democratic ones to move right-ward politically. So much so, that the Obama Administration is more conservative than Nixon's. The EPA was established during the Nixon Administration, do you think that could happen now, under the current one?

What it will eventually have to come down to, if this nation is to either evolve into a healthier one in it's current structure, or non-violently (hopefully!) separate into smaller, more culturally cohesive but still more sustainable ones, is a spiritual revolution.

That is, we all have to ask ourselves and those around us, do we accept all the other people in the nation, and World as a whole, as equal to ourselves, and worthy of everything we desire for ourselves and families? Are other cultures present, such as even the most "simple" or "undeveloped" ones, say, in the Amazon or African rain forests just as valid and worthy of existence as ours? What can we learn from these other cultures? If the majority of people in the United States can't get to that point within 10 or at the most 20 years, there will be some very hard times. Cheers.

HALF A LEGACY

It is a wonderful thing that MLK's monument on the National Mall in Washington DC has been dedicated, and that every year, the closest monday to his birthdate, 15 JAN, is a federal holiday. Yet in all the "official" recognition his legacy (for his role in this country's civil rights struggles) receives, the other half is ignored.

The last year of his life, before he was murdered for speaking out against the war in Vietnam, and US militarism in general, he was involved in what he felt was his most urgent campaign. And which of course, cost him his life. A campaign not just for ending the Vietnam War, but for true social and economic justice and equality for all people and races in the US, and throughout the World.

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2010/01/remembering-what-he-died-for.html

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009_01_11_archive.html

It is this legacy that we so urgently need to remember and reflect upon in these uncertain times, when more war clouds are already gathering. As the "corporatocracy"/military-industrial complex sets its sights on fomenting war with Iran, a country which has never threatened or invaded it's neighbours. With the illegal/immoral invasion/occupation of Iraq winding down, and a slow trend toward the same in Afghanistan, the powers that be, feel they need another to keep up their corporate profit margins. And politically, it is thought that this will also help distract attention from the other pressing problems this and all other countries are facing, with their economies, and the global environment.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/11-9

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/12-5

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/14

These speeches MLK gave are some of the most powerful, and so very sadly still relevant ones any prominent figure in this country has ever given.

4 April, 1967
 http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm 

"...It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered...

...A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

 

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death...

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

 

...These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

...A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."

3 April, 1968

 http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm

 

"...Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.

You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,

Dear Dr. King,

I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School."

And she said,

While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.

And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.

If I had sneezed -- If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.

I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

And they were telling me --. Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!"

 

Let's remember the other half of MLK's legacy, and what he died for. And act on it. Support or get involved with your local Occupy movements or any others working for peace and social/economic justice. Withdraw all support from the large criminal banks responsible for destroying our economy through their greed and recklessness, and deal only with credit unions. Support your local economies whenever possible by purchasing goods made nearby, used goods, and relying on farmer's markets and/or community supported agriculture. There are so many things we can all do to make a better future, in line with the other half of MLK's legacy. For if we don't, the future of this and other countries, and humanity in general will be very dark and uncertain. Cheers.