[NEWS] Seven population links: Germany, climate, Brexit, overpopulation, Amazon, whales, parrots

[rfmcdonald]

• DW reports on the profound and apparently irreversible depopulation of rural areas of the former East Germany.


• Stephen Leahy at VICE's Motherboard notes that pronounced global cooling may be responsible for the emigration of Donald Trump's grandfather to the United States, that he was a climate refugee.


• Christian Odendahl at politico.eu suggests that Brexit, by encouraging skilled immigrants (and others) to leave the United Kingdom, might work to the benefit of a Germany experiencing labour shortages.


• David Roberts at Vox talks about the many reasons why, as an environmental journalist, he does not talk about overpopulation as a problem.


• National Geographic reports on another massacre of indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon by goldminers.


• Phys.org warns that, at the current rate of deaths, the right whales of the North Atlantic might face extinction. Gack. (Sometimes I think we deserve a visit from the whale probe.)


• This heartbreaking story co-authored by Ted Chiang takes the Arecibo radio telescope and the Puerto Rican parrot, the iguaca, and does something terribly beautiful and sad with the confluence of the two. Go, read.