History Shows U.S. Can Tackle Pollution And Climate Change

President Nixon signs the 1969 National Environmental Protection Act

By Arpita Bhattacharyya, Center for American Progress

President Obama’s strong remarks on climate change yesterday left the environmental community hopeful that actions will soon follow his words. The Center for American Progress has laid out a blue print for how the President can move forward on climate change and energy, and most of those recommended actions can be taken now through executive orders, including setting carbon-pollution standards for existing power plants, oil refineries, and other major industrial sources under the federal Clean Air Act.

If President Obama takes these up, he will inevitably face push back from members of Congress who falsely claim that the economic costs are too high for crucial Environmental Protection Agency public health regulations. In reality, these regulations have saved thousands of lives and strengthened our economy. China’s extreme air pollution earlier this month serves as reminder of why we can’t let anti-public health rhetoric shake our resolve on crucial live saving regulations.

Air pollution levels in Beijing literally went off the charts earlier this month. On the normal scale of 1 to 500 for measuring small pollution particulates harmful for health known as PM2.5, the U.S. Embassy monitors in Beijing recorded 755 on January 12th. To put that in context, 50 or below is considered good air quality by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index. 301 to 500 is considered extremely hazardous and people are advised against going outdoors. The 755 rating surpassed the “crazy bad” pollution record set two years ago in China. The Chinese government responded by pulling government vehicles off the road and limiting activity at construction sites. Meanwhile, hospitals were full of patients with heart and respiratory ailments. China’s challenges with pollution serves as a reminder for Americans on how important Environmental Protection Agency regulations are for protecting public health.

While China’s air pollution problems may sound extreme and incomparable to air quality here in the U.S., we actually did face a very similar environmental situation during its industrialization. The reason? Tight regulatory standards for public health didn’t exist yet. In the 1940s and 1950s, smog had blanketed major cities while sewage and industrial waste infected U.S. rivers. In 1948, pollutants trapped over the industrial city of Donora, Pennsylvania killed twenty and permanently injured hundreds.

Slowly, the American Public became more aware of the effect of pollution on public health and demanded action.

In 1962, the publication of Silent Spring on the harmful impacts of DDT on animal and human health lit a spark among environmentalists and the general public alike to address industrial pollution. As the decade went on, teach-ins, TV shows, and various forums educated the public on threats the humans and the environment faced from pollution. Then in June 1969, the Cuyahoga river caught on fire (for the umpteenth time) due to oil slicked debris and pollution from decades of industrial waste. The flaming river was a powerful symbol of the costs of unchecked industrialization, and Americans demanded government action to clean up pollution.

At the end of 1969, President Nixon and Congress sprang into action to address public concerns on the environment. Congress passed the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that declared a national environmental policy, promoted efforts to protect the environment and public health, and encouraged deeper understanding of the threats humans and ecosystems faced.

On New Year’s Day, 1970, when President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), he said he was:

“[C]onvinced that the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.”

As the year progressed, President Nixon decided that a new independent agency was necessary to coordinate the environmental work across the administration. On December 2nd, 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency opened with Assistant Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus at the reins. By the end of the month, Congress had passed the Clean Air Act, giving the EPA the authority to establish national air quality standards, national standards for significant new pollution sources, and facilities emitting hazardous substances. With NEPA and the Clean Air Act as bookends to 1970, President Nixon and the 91st Congress paved the way for the vital health standards that protect Americans today.

President Nixon set up the regulatory system that continues to protect us today. Notably, a Republican President was able to hear the public and take sweeping action to clean up our air and water, action that the anti-regulation Republican party of today repeatedly fights against.

But the reason that the U.S. doesn’t make headlines for extreme pollution like China is that we continue to fight for public health with new and improved air quality standards. The EPA bases its rulemaking on the most current, best available science. As our knowledge grows about new and old pollutants alike, the EPA is legally bound to set new standards to ensure healthy environments surround our schools and workplaces.

For example, science in the last decades has proved beyond doubt that carbon pollution will be harmful for human livelihoods. In June 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously declared that the EPA is “unambigously correct” that the Clean Air Act requires it to regulate carbon pollution. As science evolves, our policies must as well. Our work is not over just because our air quality isn’t as “crazy bad” China’s.

In his second term, the Obama Administration has the opportunity to fight for public health standards through the reduction of carbon pollution and smog. Let’s continue protecting Americans families and ensure they have safe environments to live, work, and learn now and in the future.

Arpita Bhattacharyya is Research Assistant to Distinguished Senior Fellow Carol Browner at the Center for American Progress.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery('#comment_submit').click(function(){if(jQuery('#comment_check:checked').length

View the original article here

January 23 News: U.S. Warned About Multiple Nuclear Meltdowns Years Before Fukushima

Four years before the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was warned about the possibility of a plant suffering simultaneous meltdowns due to a natural disaster. [NYTimes]

The accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011 alerted the American nuclear industry and its regulators to the possibility that operators at plants with more than one reactor might have to deal with more than one meltdown at a time in a flood, earthquake or other catastrophe. Officials are now working to assure that they could master that situation.

But documents uncovered by a group that is critical of nuclear safety show that a high-level safety analyst at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission posed the possibility to his superiors in July 2007, about four years before the earthquake and tsunami that led to three simultaneous meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi. The documents also show that in August 2008, the commission staff formally acknowledged the issue.

But until Japan’s disaster, progress in the American nuclear industry was glacial….

The warning, which now seems prophetic, predicted “common cause failures,’’ meaning single events that disable different pieces of equipment that are supposedly independent and nearly invulnerable to failing simultaneously on their own. The risk analyst, Richard Sherry, wrote that flooding or earthquakes could disrupt both normal grid power and emergency backup power.

China is trying to get a leg up on clean energy transportation by getting into the patent wars. The country has filed over 2,000 patent applications — 8 percent of the world’s total — placing China third globally. [ChinaDaily]

Greenpeace released a report yesterday warning of various fossil fuel projects around the world that could serve as “carbon bombs,” driving the planet still closer to disastrous levels of global warming. China and Australia topped the list. [The Guardian]

A global and legally-binding agreement to reduce mercury emissions was reached in Geneva over the weekend. But it still faces ratification by over 140 countries, even as studies show mercury levels around the world continue to rise. [LA Times]

The unusually cold temperatures across America’s northern Plains and New England could be due to a combination of a warming event in the upper atmosphere over the Arctic, and fluctuations in a natural cycle of tropical rainfall near the equator. [ClimateCentral]

Ikea will double its investment in renewable energy — including wind farms and solar parks — to $4 billion by 2020, as part of an effort to bring down costs for more cash-strapped consumers. [Bloomberg]

jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery('#comment_submit').click(function(){if(jQuery('#comment_check:checked').length

View the original article here

Democratic Lawmakers To Re-Introduce Financial Transactions Tax

Rep. Peter DeFazio (left) & Sen. Tom Harkin

Democrats were unsuccessful in their push for a financial transactions tax after the 2008 financial crisis, but after 11 Eurozone countries received approval to institute such a tax Tuesday, two lawmakers are planning to try again. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) will reintroduce their proposal, which would raise an estimated $352 billion over the next decade by instituting a 0.03 percent tax on financial trades.

A financial transactions tax would slow down high-frequency trading, which has exploded in the last five years. Such trading “has absolutely no social value,” according to one of its pioneers, and only increases volatility in the market. The tax would have little effect on normal traders.

Critics of the Euro-wide turn to a transactions tax say it could slow down growth and encourage businesses to move elsewhere, and similar claims have been made about the American version. But 52 financial executives endorsed the tax last year, and DeFazio told ThinkProgress last year that such claims are false.

“For 50 years we had a tax that was about seven times larger than this when the country was seeing the greatest growth in its history, post-World War II,” he said. “So we’ve proven this will not have a detrimental impact on growth. In fact, it perhaps is beneficial to growth. It’s not necessarily beneficial to salaries of hedge fund managers on Wall Street.”

View the original article here

Simcere Pharma sells stake in Shanghai Celgen

Simcere Pharmaceutical Group has agreed to sell its stake in Shanghai Celgen Bio-Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. for about 302 million yuan ($48.1 million).

The Chinese drug developer said Tuesday it entered into a share transfer agreement with Devont Asset Management Ltd. on Jan. 15 to sell its roughly 35 percent equity interest in Shanghai, which it acquired in 2009.

After the deal is completed, Simcere will no longer hold an equity interest in the company.

Simcere makes and sells pharmaceuticals in China, and focuses on the treatment of diseases that have high incidence or mortality rates like cancer, strokes or cardiovascular diseases.

View the original article here

Reducing the debt tax

The Fiscal Cliff debate ultimately came down to a narrow choice between two options: tax increases or massive tax increases. Given the size of government spending, however, both of these options always assumed a third: government continuing to take out more loans that will have to be repaid by taxing future generations.
Make no mistake, that’s why the American people are being asked to once again take on more debt by increasing Congress’ borrowing authority. Politicians have maxed out their credit card of $16.4 trillion, and the recently agreed to tax hikes do little to nothing to prevent the sea of red ink drowning our government.

Few elected officials are fighting for the solution we really need: reducing the size of government and the money we must borrow to pay for it. However, some voices have been raised against our nation’s borrowing practices. “Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities,” one U.S. senator has declared. “Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans—a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about.”
Like all its expenditures, every dollar the federal government pays in interest must be raised by taxing this generation or by borrowing from the next. But borrowing is just a deferred tax. And as any American who owns a credit card can tell you, buying now and paying later comes with a cost.
What we’re really doing as a nation is purchasing with IOUs. The senator has described it as “shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.” Moves to increase the debt limit he called a sign of “leadership failure” borne out of “our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.”
The senator in question? The former junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. The date? March 16, 2006. The size of the debt when Senator Obama made his speech? $8.6 trillion. The size of the debt today? Nearly double that amount.
The average taxpayer in America now owes $142,583 — and this year will pay about $1,400 in annual interest payments (or debt tax) alone. Matters will only get worse. The federal government is projected to spend $44 trillion over the next 10 years. During that time, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that even under the rosiest of scenarios we will add at least $4.5 trillion to the national debt and more than double the cost of our interest payments.
The need for fiscal restraint is urgent. Adopting Mr. Obama’s past opposition to raising the debt limit is the most important and obvious place to start. Doing so will require immediate spending cuts coupled with structural entitlement reforms. Only when we rein in the size and cost of government can we avoid levying devastating taxes now and in the future.
At the end of his March 2006 speech, then-Senator Obama concluded, “leadership means the buck stops here.” Leadership is exactly what America needs now and in the weeks and months ahead. The jury is out on whether or not we’ll get it.
Feinberg is a policy analyst at the Charles Koch Institute who specializes in government spending.
View Comments

View the original article here

Flu Season Fuels Debate Over Paid Sick Time Laws

Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images A man is given a flu shot by at the medical offices of Yaffe Ruden & Associates in New York.

Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for the 40 percent of American private-sector workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by super storm Sandy.

Michael Sinesky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinesky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

View the original article here

Gibbs says Obama ‘anxious to get started’ on second term

Senior Obama adviser Robert Gibbs on Monday said that the president was “anxious to get started” on his second term and would use his Inaugural address to summon a spirit of bipartisanship.

“I think he feels comfortable with what he’s got, at ease with what he wants to say,” said Gibbs on “CBS This Morning” of the president’s speech. "He understands the moment that he and the country are dealing with and is anxious to get started.”

Gibbs wouldn’t share any specifics, but said that President Obama’s address would strike a “hopeful” tone.

“It talks about the values and the vision and the ideals that bring us to this very moment as Americans,” he said. “You’ll hear the president talk a lot about what we have to do in this country to get the big progress on the big challenges that we face.

“One party can’t solve these issues; not even just those in government can tackle the big challenges. All Americans need to be involved if we want to move past what’s paralyzed this town for so long and make some progress,” Gibbs added.

President Obama was officially sworn in to begin his second term on Sunday, but will hold his ceremonial public swearing-in Monday.

Obama’s second Inaugural speech will help set the tone for what will be a busy start to his new term. Obama and Congress must negotiate over a series of budget deadlines to prevent the Treasury from defaulting and a series of automatic spending cuts from taking effect. 

The president is also ready to push new gun-control restrictions in the aftermath of last month’s shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., and has said he will make immigration reform a key priority. The White House will face sharp opposition on both issues.

While Obama will likely outline his hopes for a second term in the Inaugural speech, the president is expected to save discussion of policy specifics until his State of the Union address on Feb. 12.

View Comments

View the original article here

GOP Senator Says Gun Safety Is Not A Major Issue

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) dismissed President Obama’s push for new gun safety legislation during an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley on Sunday. “That gets beside the major issues that face American families, which are jobs and the economy and the debt and spending,” he said:

CROWLEY: I spoke with [White House adviser] David Plouffe in the segment before this. He said that he is confident there are enough vote he is in the House and there are the requisite 60 votes in the Senate to pass universal background checks for gun owners and limiting the clips, those high-capacity magazine clips that can fire off so many rounds to 10 and under. Do you think that’s so? Do you think Congress would pass a ban on those clips with ten or over and a universal background check. Is that going to happen?

BARRASSO: No, I don’t think it will. Candy, that gets beside the major issues that face American families, which are jobs and the economy and the debt and spending. That’s where people are focused. That’s the big anxiety of this country.

CROWLEY: Sure, I agree with you, but as you know, you deal with a lot of things up there and at the White House. People and their families deal with a loft things. One of the things that’s been out there is gun control of some sort. Something that addresses Newtown, whether its gun control or better access to mental health. You know the president’s going to push that.

BARRASSO: As a doctor, I can tell you the president’s essentially ignored the major issues of mental health and violence in society in the media and video games and he has focused so much on what may be happening at gun shows or on gun shelves and gun stores that I think he is failing to really try to find a solution to the problem of the tragedy of Newtown.

Watch it:

Just yesterday, five people were shot at three different gun shows on so-called “Gun Appreciation Day.”

View the original article here

Rice: Immigration debate chance to show GOP has ‘broad appeal’

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday said that immigration reform would be a pivotal issue for Republicans, who needed to prove their party had “broad appeal.”

"I think immigration is really the big issue, frankly. We sent some pretty bad signals around immigration," said Rice, as she made her debut as a CBS News contributor on “Face the Nation.”

In a panel discussion, Rice said the Republican Party needed to shift its messaging on immigration and said voters would be watching the upcoming debate on comprehensive immigration reform in Congress.

"The Republican Party certainly has to stop turning off large segments of the population. I've said it's not a strategy to keeping hoping that parts of the population don't turn out. You've got to simply broaden," Rice said. "The Republican Party has to demonstrate that it has broad appeal."

Rice also praised Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for leading the call for immigration reform among Republicans in the Senate.

Rice also said that President Obama, who began his second term Sunday, would need to remain focused on the nation’s economy.

"The first challenge is to do something about the American economy, because I do think that our international leadership has suffered both from the perception that America can't get its act together on entitlements and the deficit and so forth, and from the reality that without a stronger economy there are just some things we cannot do," Rice said.

Rice is the first African-American woman to serve as secretary of State. She formerly served as President George W. Bush's national security adviser and has faced criticism for the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war.

Rice was one of the top speakers at the Republican National Convention this summer. She is currently a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

On Sunday, "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer announced Rice's new role as a contributor with CBS News.

View Comments

View the original article here

I Have A Dream

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is an opportunity to learn from his strategic thinking and mastery of rhetoric. That is especially true on the day Obama will be delivering his second inaugural address.

Consider King’s powerful words about the civil rights struggle, which echo today in the climate battle:

We are 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 the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’

Note how King repeatedly uses key figures of speech — alliteration, metaphor — and extends the metaphor of another master of rhetoric, Shakespeare (Julius Caeser), all of which are classic oratorical strategies (see “How to be as persuasive as Lincoln, Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare“).

I think science has mostly told us what it can about the fiercely urgent need to act swiftly to avoid adding the bleached bones and jumbled residues of our civilization to the pile (see “A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice“). Our urgent need now is for much more persuasiveness (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1 and Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”). I have a dream that progressives will some day have the winning words to match their vital ideas.

King’s most famous speech illustrates the rhetorical principle of foreshadowing, as I discuss in my new book, Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga, excerpted below:

As a theatrical device, the essence of foreshadowing can be found in Anton Chekhov’s advice to a novice playwright: “If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.” Create anticipation and then fulfill the listener’s desire.

Foreshadowing is related to the figure of speech ominatio (Latin for omen), which, one Renaissance rhetoric text explains is “when we do show & foretell what shall hereafter come to pass, which we gather by some likely sign, and in ill things we foretell it, to the intent that heed may be paid, and the danger of avoided; and in good things to stir up expectation and hope.”

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has a soothsayer famously and futilely warn Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March”-a foreshadowing ominatio that Caesar famously and fatally ignores: “He is a dreamer,” shrugs Caesar. “Let us leave him.”

Bob Dylan’s tragic “Like a Rolling Stone” heroine is similarly warned, and by many: “People’d call, say, ‘Beware doll, you’re bound to fall’ “-which she also unwisely pays no heed to: “You thought they were all kiddin’ you.”

Dramatic foreshadowing has an even more important rhetorical counterpart. The golden rule of speechmaking is “Tell ‘em what what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell ‘em; then tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” The first part of that triptych is the rhetorical foreshadowing of the main idea of your speech, the introduction of the dominant theme of your remarks.

I HAVE A DREAM
I can think of no more remarkable combination of dramatic and rhetorical foreshadowing in a modern public address than the opening lines of Martin Luther King’s keynote address at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (video above and text here).

The speech is often presented without his introductory sentence, which is unfortunate since it is an essential element of his message. King began, “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” This opening line foreshadows that the intellectual focus of the speech will be “freedom,” a word that, with its partner “free,” King repeats twenty-four times in his 1500-word oration. As we will soon see, it also anticipates his optimistic message.

King uses the word “history” twice in this simple prefatory line, foreshadowing that he will be taking a historical perspective, which he does from the start.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

Echoing Lincoln’s famous formulation, “fourscore and seven years ago,” in the literal shadow of the Lincoln monument, King here combines the verbal with the visual to turn Lincoln’s two great 1863 acts of communication-the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg address-into a symbolic foreshadowing of his own remarks 100 years later. In doubling this historical connection, he underscores what will be his main theme: Emancipation has not yet been realized:

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

We hear again King’s favorite rhetorical device in this speech, anaphora, in the repetition of “one hundred years later” to help him refine the central idea that “the Negro is still not free.” King’s speech makes the words “Emancipation Proclamation” cruelly ironic: The Negro was proclaimed free, but still is not.

The body of the speech lays out King’s nonviolent approach to fulfilling the “quest for freedom” and restates again and again both his dream and his demand for freedom. He says that “in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream … a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.” An essential goal of the speech is to instill hope, optimism, and faith in the listeners that the dream of freedom will be achieved, to urge with a powerful metaphor that they “not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” He describes his stirring dreams, which are themselves ominatio, foretelling a future without racism, a future of freedom for all. He builds to the climax using the phrase “Let freedom ring” a dozen times and ends with the final repetitions of the key word as he says we can “speed up that day when all of God’s children … will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ ”

Now we see what was powerfully foreshadowed in the opening line: “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” He is foreshadowing-prophesying-the success of this demonstration and the realization of his dreams. Through the figure of ominatio King did “show & foretell what shall hereafter come to pass “… in good things to stir up expectation and hope.”

That King would be a master of rhetoric and foreshadowing is not unexpected since he was, after all, a Reverend, a preacher, a student of the Bible. Foreshadowing and ominatio are the foundation upon which the Bible’s scaffolding of rhetoric was built-and the power of dreams to foretell the future is a Biblical truism. For Christians, the words in the Old Testament foreshadow the coming of the Messiah in the New Testament. The gospels are clearly written to echo the prophecies and promises and proverbs in the Old Testament. If you are a believer, that is because Jesus is the Messiah, the fulfillment of the words in the Old Testament. If you are not a believer, that is because the writers of the New Testament were trying to portray Jesus as the Messiah. Either way, by God’s design or man’s, the Old Testament foreshadows the New Testament again and again.

Jesus himself makes many prophecies that show and foretell what shall hereafter come to pass. He foretells events that happen very soon, such as when he tells Peter, “Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.” He foretells events a long time off: “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” And he foretells events that have not yet come to pass-his return.

Foreshadowing and ominatio are key elements of poetic justice. Consider the story of Joseph. His brothers hated him because their father loved him the most, which the gift of the coat of many colors showed only too clearly. Joseph dreamt that he and his brothers were collecting stalks of grain, and when his own grain stalk stood up, those of his brothers bowed down before him. “Shalt thou indeed reign over us?” his brothers said. The text goes on, “And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.” Dreams are classic foreshadowing in the Bible as well as many other holy books.

One day, when Joseph’s brothers saw him in the field, “they said one to another, ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit “¦ and we shall see what will become of his dreams.’ ” This is best labeled ironic foreshadowing, a favorite device also of Shakespeare’s and other great writers. The final line is intended as sarcasm, that the dreams will be dashed in death, but it soon becomes dramatic irony.

Instead of killing him, his brothers sold him into slavery. Joseph ended up in the Egyptian prison, but using his power to interpret dreams, he not only won his freedom but soon became Pharaoh’s right hand man, after predicting that Pharaoh’s dream of seven lean cows eating seven fat cows meant there would be seven good harvests followed by seven years of famine, and thus, during the good years, Pharaoh would need to store up the grain. Every single thing Joseph said comes true. Then, during the famine, Jacob sent his sons to Egypt for grain so the family would not starve. Joseph thus gained power over his brothers, whom he put through various trials. But instead of seeking revenge, he saved his family from starvation.

This is poetic justice, that Joseph’s dreams of having power over his brothers came true precisely because they abandoned him, making their words dramatic irony that foreshadowed the end of the story. This is irony of fate.

The enduring power and poignancy of this story can be found in the words on a plaque at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee, the site of Martin Luther King’s assassination (with a slightly different translation than the King James): “Behold the dreamer. Let us slay him, and we will see what will become of his dream.”

King’s dream did survive him, and, some might argue, in the election of Barack Obama, witnessed its apotheosis, though not its completion.

Whereas the civil rights movement was trying to undo a terrible multi-century-long moral wrong, the challenge for climate science activists (the future generations rights movement?) is that we are trying to prevent a terrible multi-century-long moral wrong. That mission will require even more eloquence, even more commitment.

I have a dream of clean air and clean water for my daughter and all the children of the world. I have a dream of clean energy jobs for millions of Americans and tens of millions of people around the globe. I have a dream we saved this garden of Eden for generations to come, saved it from the greed and myopia of the few.

View the original article here