Forward Observer’s take.
My wife and I, primarily her desire to know, attended a walking tour of Venice, Italy today. The tour was Ecology of Venice by Context Tours. There were just three of us and the tour was led by a young man that just submitted his thesis for his PhD, we congratulated him.
A key point, in this (part of) world, as the tour guide stated in the beginning, believes in sea rise.
As a retired soldier, it’s all about the military
Historically, Venice was built in its location for much the same reason a castle is built with a moat. Kept invading armies at bay so to say
What I came away with was that the city’s inhabitants are leaving at the rate of 1,000 a year. He told us that was eating into their population of fifty thousand. Later, talking to a British couple they heard the population to now be at forty-seven thousand. I questioned the loss of tax base, but did not question the the voter base which is eroding. He bounced back to his earlier point that Venice was fast becoming like a Disneyland ~ tourism was their primary source of income ~ no people, just an empty decaying city. Another very important point here is that people are migrating to where they can live and with any luck, find jobs.
The ground level is flooded on a good year about three times, and on a bad year eighteen times and computer modeling showed a steady increase. There is only one home now on the ground level, whereas everything else is now pretty much store or business related on the first floor/ground level. Our hotel room is on the first floor, and in talking to the shift person, only the court yard here gets flooded from time to time. The water doing the flooding is not only salt water, it is the city sewer water. There are no septic systems to speak of. . . My joaking is that it gets the royal flush twice a day. Okay, sad humor. Later today we sat looking out over the water and did not see signs of nasty stuff so things must clearly work, but now I know why in all my quick tours of Venice starting fifty years ago as a young enlisted soldier, I have never seen anyone swimming in the water. As we were reviewing menus, we avoided the places with “the catch of the day.”
There are three key points where the water from the sea enters the lagoon. Projects started ten years ago have failed from the get-go because the population did not want their view obststrcted with some gigantic sea wall/gate thing like say the Dutch live with. The next big failure is technology. Their mechanism dream was to lift up and hold the water back while needed, and then lay back down out of sight, out of mind when not in use. Well, Elon could share his experience with the Model X Falcon Wings, and they still might not get it. Remember now, they physically started ten years ago, and are only half done, and metal under water has rushed out already and the door or raised part has never been installed or tested ~ my guess is, it never will.
Then there is the government; it is corrupt according to our guide. Again from my military days, the latter part as an officer and knowing a thing or two about history during my parents era to now; well I just never gave Italian Italy much thought when came to augmentation forces; militarily speaking. The people now tend to protest new technology proposals once they catch wind of them. Since man engineered projects seem to fail more often than succeed since we as humans fail to take into account all the ramifications that mother nature has built into the natural way of things. Other writers here have pointed that out a time or two.
My wife would walk away from our homeland in a heartbeat, but nothing is really “greener over the mountain.” I got a kick out of the British couple we chatted with while sitting on the bench overlooking the water. They were eager to leave Britain following BritX (military shorthand), but have stayed since their children were staying and held out hope that they could help correct things. We would sell off everything and move, but then there is our daughter, the GrandPups (grandkids) and our son-in-law. Looking around it is just as sad everywhere else or no where to go to avoid climate change. After a tiring day of the walking guided tour, and our own exploration (several miles by foot); my wife last evening said “we did not see a single car.” Interesting observation after a long day.
Gotta love that stock price swing
