Quotes About Dikes

God made the ocean but the Dutch made Holland.

Much of the Netherlands lies considerably below sea level, as you well know. Through the process of building dikes to wall out the salty sea and through pumping the water into canals, the country of the ingenious, resourceful, and doughty Dutch has literally been born of the sea.

God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.

Two years ago, when leaders in neighboring Mathews County broached the subject of sea-level rise, Tea Partiers packed meetings, warning of an environmentalist plot to "put nature above man." They linked a proposal to build dikes to a United Nations sustainability plan known as Agenda 21, which has inspired a number of conspiracy theories among far-right activists.

Twenty-five percent of the Netherlands is reclaimed land. The whole country is sixteen feet below sea level.

Katrina was a relatively modest storm that overwhelmed inadequate dikes and levees. Many climate scientists believe that in days to come governments will need to get better at shoreline defense. The world has 136 big, low-lying coastal cities with a total population of about 550 million people. All are threatened by the rising seas associated with climate change.