MORGENTHAU WON:

Eastern Germany has gone to the wolves (David Crossland, 9/02/08, The National)

Germany’s former communist east is suffering the most dramatic population decline of any region in Europe in what researchers are calling an unstoppable exodus that may eventually turn much of the area into a nature reserve.

The fall, caused by the departure of skilled workers and a dwindling birth rate, has had a devastating impact on towns and villages with entire districts transformed into wastelands of closed shops, boarded-up houses and deserted apartment blocks.
“Eastern Germany is the biggest demographic crisis region in Europe according to our indicators,” said Steffen Kröhnert, the author of a recent study on European population trends by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.

As people move away, wolves have started migrating into the east from Poland and the Czech Republic, and neo-Nazis have found growing support among young, poorly educated men left behind with few job prospects. Since East Germany united with the west in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the region’s population has fallen by 1.7 million people or 10 per cent, mainly because people migrated to the richer west in search of jobs as their inefficient economy collapsed.

Despite massive government subsidies, the decline is set to continue because of a sharp drop in births, and by 2030 as much as a third of the population may have deserted the east, the institute said. The region makes up about 30 per cent of Germany’s surface area.

Not that wolves aren't preferable, just ask this guy, The population issue: Big, critical, global (Neal Peirce, 10/04/08, Stateline.org)

Imagine the next president of the United States moving decisively to slow down the world’s population growth as it arcs from today’s 6.7 billion toward a predicted and perilous 9.2 billion by 2050.

The cost to the U.S. Treasury could reach $1 billion a year. Worth it? Consider what a proactive U.S. global family planning effort might achieve.

+ By moderating population growth, there’d be some lessening of catastrophic food and water shortages afflicting less developed nations.
+ Global warming dangers wouldn’t rise quite so rapidly.
+ The rights and life prospects of literally millions of women around the globe might be enhanced.
+ Significant worldwide totals of abortions and infant deaths could be avoided.
+ Democracy and stability would be promoted worldwide as fewer nations faced the turmoil easily triggered by high birth rates creating population “bumps” of poor and resentful youth.
+ And with a clear, unequivocal U.S. lead, other countries and the United Nations might expand their international family planning assistance.

We could return the whole planet to the wolves and neo-Nazis!

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 5, 2008 10:09 PM