Sea Walls May Be Cheaper Than Rising Waters

Every country worldwide will be building walls to defend itself from rising seas within 90 years because the cost of flooding will be more expensive than the price of protective projects, researchers predict in a new study.

The encroaching seawater threatens to flood hundreds of millions of people every year by 2100 as homes that are already below flood heights, or will be, succumb to climbing oceans.  If governments fail to take any action, the annual cost of damage stands to reach hundreds of billions of dollars, at best, and as high as $100 trillion under grimmer scenarios, according to the paper, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The bleakest outcome could result in nearly 5 percent of the world's population facing yearly floods that drain almost 10 percent from the globe's economy, the paper says. That would require a collision of severe scenarios that involve leaping ocean levels, high numbers of people living along seashores and a lack of defensive efforts.

The researchers think that the worst results are unlikely to happen, because people won't tolerate it.  Instead, the group of 10 European academics predicts that the difficult decision to build expensive dike systems will grow easier in the future as the price of floods increase.

Sea Walls May Be Cheaper Than Rising Waters