By the end of this year the world's most influential and powerful individuals will be assembling more than once to discuss the economic and ecological future of the planet. From September 24 through the 25, the G-20 Summit will be taking place in Pittsburgh to address the recent financial collapse and the economic implications of climate change.
Remember the panic-inducing headlines of 2008? Government Takes Over Troubled Mortgage Giants, Lehman Brothers Files for Bankruptcy, Bank of America Buys Merrill Lynch, and Stock Prices Plummet - that last one just as the government announced an $85 billion emergency loan to rescue insurance giant AIG. And that was just the beginning.
Pittsburgh, PA--As groups protest the Pittsburgh International Coal Conference days before the G-20 arrives in the city, additional actions against U.S. climate policy and the fossil fuels industry took place on both the east and west coasts.
"What surprised us most was that adults in the community were playing a pivotal part in the town’s decline by pushing the best and brightest young people to leave, and by underinvesting in those who chose to stay, even though it was the latter that were the towns’ best chance for a future."
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Civic and business leaders in the places most affected by hollowing out will tell anyone willing to listen how it is their young people, not hogs, steel, beef, corn, or soybeans, that have become their most valuable export commodity. Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning observer of small town life, believes that any story of small-town America is, at its core, the story of the people who stay and the ones who go. Yet, what is different at this moment is how, in a postindustrial economy that places such a high premium on education and credentials, the flight of so many young people is transforming rural communities throughout the nation into impoverished ghost towns. A new birth simply cannot replace the loss that results every time a college-educated twentysomething on the verge of becoming a worker, taxpayer, homeowner, or parent leaves. And as more manufacturing jobs disappear every day, the rural crisis that was a slow-acting wasting disease over the past two decades has evolved into a metastasized cancer.
Source: IPS News
(IPS) – As media and government delegates prepare for the G20 Summit to be held Sep. 24-25 in Pittsburgh, local business and activist groups are promoting clashing visions of days to come.
Hit hard over the last quarter of the twentieth century with a collapsing steel industry, recession and falling population, Pittsburgh is still a decent place to live – often highly rated because of low housing costs.
On one side, Pittsburgh government and business leaders say they have reshaped the city to connect with globalisation as a hi-tech, financial and medical industry hub.
We go live to the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where Manuel Zelaya has sought refuge. After Zelaya’s dramatic return, the coup government ordered a curfew, but thousands of Zelaya supporters defied the ban and rallied outside the Brazilian embassy. Earlier this morning police fired tear gas outside the embassy to disburse the crowd. We hear Zelaya speak from inside the embassy and speak to Andres Conteris and Mark Weisbrot.
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