Our waters will rise, with global warming melting polar ice sheets and higher temperatures causing our seas to expand. People will lose their lives, their livelihoods and homes through dislocation. What are we to do? Build barriers and wait it out.

Bowman and collaborator Douglas Hill have spent seven years shopping around a proposal to build enormous retractable storm surge barriers in three locations around New York, including one straddling the Verrazano Narrows, and another at Throgs Neck, where Long Island Sound meets the East River. Such barriers, rising fifteen metres above sea level, would effectively wall off New York Harbor if a major hurricane sent tsunami-like waves toward the city. “This would be one of the biggest engineering projects in the history of the United States,” Bowman states.

And yet:

given the alarming but ultimately unpredictable acceleration of climate change, there’s no telling how long a given barrier would afford the necessary protection (even if it were properly maintained), and therefore such structures create a false sense of security and a heightened risk for those who depend on them.

Is this not just a feeble attempt to appear hard at work on the environment, its protection, and ours in the event it fails? There are better avenues: more efficient use of energy (in our homes, for one), better public transportation, alternative fuels (cellulosic ethanol seems a worthy candidate)...etc. Barriers should, at best, be considered a sort of last-ditch effort.