Catalina RoaDr. José Sebastián Terneus

ENC 1102 February 1, 2021

Sinking Our Home

Miami, our home, is known for being the best place to go on vacations, the place where you can find everything you can imagine to have fun with your friends or family, but it is also known as the sinking city that will not stop until it is gone; yes, that is the place you are calling home. Climate change is changing our life every day and it is not going to stop unless we, as a community start working together to safe first, our city, but the same time, safe the world. “Sinking cities: Miami” is a documentary that help us open the eyes in what is happening right now. The video shows actual facts, images and data that demonstrate that climate change is happening.

To begin with, the documentary helped me inform myself better about what is really happening in Miami by the facts and explications of people like Astrid Caldas, a senior climate scientist. She states that “by 2030, it is expected that they will see about 50 tidal floods a year”. I was impressed after seeing that part of the videos where she said that because I could not imagine any more floods in the city besides the ones we have already. With this information she makes me understand that our life is changing every day, and that it will get worse, it will not stop until we have consciousness about what is happening. After watching the documentary, I feel that I can explain better to other people the information I received of how everything is changing around us.

“Sinking cities” also reveal how some population of the Miami community have been struggling not only with the weather changes but with how to survive the life in Miami, emphasizing on how expensive is, and how they have been living paycheck by paycheck for years. Furthermore, this same community is being affected by the people that want them to move from the places they live in because of the floods. “…and now they’re trying to take it away after all these years when they didn’t want because the place, they love so much is going to be underwater”, this is a little part of what Valencia Gunder said in the video, where she is trying to explain how the community of liberty City have been defending their home from people that are trying to take it to “replace” the parts from Miami that are sinking. Therefore, it means that we as a community prefers to take the home of others to have ours but not to be aware of what we are generating.

This documentary shows that climate change is something serious, making a huge emphasize here in Miami, and that if we do not stop avoiding it, we are going to regret it faster than we all think. Now, after making a great reflection, I feel worried about what is going to happen to Miami, to the place we all enjoy, and that if we do not find a solution, we are going to lose everything that one day we called home. To conclude, I feel the responsibility to start sharing what I learned, I want to start making a change to our city.