Radical climate change activists have come up with a solution to their fears that Venice, the historic Italian city, is slowly sinking into the Adriatic Sea – simply let the city sink. Catherine Bennett laments that, “…as loss and destruction of global heritage sites due to climate change becomes more commonplace, we need to change the way we think about that loss and redefine our notion of failure.”
To this end, Bennett suggests the money used to keep the Adriatic Sea at bay should instead be used to relocate the residents of Venice. Once depopulated, nature would just take its course and over time wash away the over 1,200 year old city.
The idea behind letting Venice sink is called ‘transformative continuity’. According to Bennett, those who support ‘transformative continuity, “…hope that places that have been damaged by climate change can serve as a “memory” and even a deterrent, to prevent the same thing happening in the future.”
Letting go of historic sites and landmarks isn’t just a matter of letting things fade to history. Bennett sees the process as an anti-Western deprogramming: “We also have to detach our sense of national or regional identity from our heritage sites and think outside the modern, Western framework of permanence.” Erin Seekamp, an employee of the U.S. National Parks Service, argues that impermanence is an integral party of Indigenous culture and that adopting such non-Western cultural ideals will be necessary as the global climate changes.
Bennet eludes to a broader program of dismantling Western ideology, concluding that we must adopt a “transformative way of thinking about heritage” regarding historic sites all around the world and that nations should just let their heritage slip below the waves of change.
