Is Venice Sinking???; Contaminated Communities and an Inconvenient Truth

After reading and discussing Contaminated Communities and talking about psychological, social, and emotional impacts on documented cases of toxic contamination, it really had be thinking about Venice and how my life would be if I was a real Venetian. The people who live here are in a constant battle; they need to choose to believe that Venice will eventually be underwater, or they can choose to ignore it. I honestly don't know how I could feel if I knew that the city I lived in was in constant danger. When the high tide arrives in Venice, usually in the winter, Venice becomes totally flooded with water. This causes damage to the city and disruption to it's in habitants. Even walking around looking at the buildings you can see the bottoms of them being rotted away by the salt water. In this WiseGeek article by Gary Crystal I found online (http://www.wisegeek.com/is-venice-sinking.htm), it claims that "Over the last 1,000 years, it has sun by around seven centimeters for every century, but recent reports have stated that in the last century alone, the city of Venice has lowered by around 24 centimeters. This may have more to do with global warming and the melting polar ice caps than with Venice Sinking alone"(Crystal). He goes on to say that global warming is an issue and a huge concern for any costal cities or cities built on Islands. Venice is now considering making huge steel gates to block the floods (which we'll see tomorrow at Punta Laguna). After learning all of this I am really appreciating being here, since it may be the last chance I get.

We also had a chance to watch Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Now I saw this movie a few years ago when it first came out, but I'm happy I got a chance to see it again, because this time I was really taking into consideration the place that I am living in. In the film, Al Gore tries to address the public about the climate crisis. He talks about the political affects on Global Warming as well. It made me really try and relate Venice to Katrina. What if some sort of huge flood came over Venice and killed hundreds of people? Where could the inhabitants go and could be city be rebuilt? Does the city need to be evacuated at some point? After we watched "An Inconvenient Truth" we saw some short films that the people over at Punta Laguna gave us. I saw what Venice looked like in the winter with the floods. A friend of mine was here in the winter and told me she has to bring rain boots and walk around in water the entire time. Scary. I just hope we can find a way to save the city.