Floating Homes
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Photo by James Morgan
Nature

Floating Homes

Architectural Solutions to Sea Level Rise
Łukasz Stępnik
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time 8 minutes

As we all know, when Yahweh unleashed a great flood upon humanity, he saved Noah and his family by ordering Noah to build an ark. This story was recorded not only by Jews, but also by other nations, such as the Sumerians and Mesopotamians (except their God was called Ea or Enki, and those saved from the deluge were known as Utnapishtim or Ziusudra). Clearly, they were all onto something. No wonder people of reason are preparing for another flood to come – even in Poland, too.

In the 1995 film Waterworld, Kevin Costner’s character – a fish-like mutated human sailing the endless ocean – takes his beloved Helen for an underwater journey. There, he shows her the drowned ruins of New York City. Corals cover reinforced concrete structures that look like the haunted graveyard of a once-glorious civilization that brought doom upon itself. Scarce dialogues make it difficult to deduce the exact cataclysm that resulted in the world’s submergence under water, but we can assume it was to do with melting ice caps and the immense amounts of carbon dioxide emissions that had been seeping into the atmosphere for decades.

Is the deluge coming for us?

That’s right!

Most scientific prognoses for the Earth’s future look not unlike the Kevin Costner film. This makes the screenwriters for Waterworld pioneers of environmental enlightenment, who educated the masses on the dangers of global warming.

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Ten Feet Under
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Photo by Paulina Wilk
Nature

Ten Feet Under

The Gold Rush in Peru’s Amazon Basin
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In the southernmost part of Peru, pristine Amazon forests are turning into a toxic desert. Thousands of prospectors go there to collect gold with their bare hands.

The fog is slowly gathering at the lakeshore, near the thick wall of centuries-old trees. There’s still a good hour until dusk, but something suddenly changes. There’s a commotion on the water. A family of coypu is hunting piranhas. They’re in a hurry, swimming together, snorting, holding pale yellow fish in their clenched teeth. They jump out on fallen tree trunks and eat there, crunching and smacking. Then, they play in shallow waters – squealing, biting each other gently and cuddling in an early-evening display of tenderness.

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