Subject: Re: Losing coastal cities
You can do quite a bit over a 100 or 200 years. But only if you make a decision and get started. Waiting on the government to make it unnecessary to adapt is a fools errand.

Yes, you can do a lot in 100 years. No doubt. Government isn't going to do this, either. If you own land in a coastal city, are you going to just up and abandon it? Not likely. Whether a home, or commercial space, or the Chrysler Building, you have money invested. You can either sell to a greater fool, or you're stuck with it. Unless the government bails you out (no pun intended).

Government WILL move government facilities, especially military bases. Likely, government will be called upon (or demanded) to implement remediation solutions (e.g. the levies of New Orleans...Army Corps of Engineers). I see it as highly unlikely that government will sit idle and let "market forces" take care of it. Land that floods is worthless, and a lot of very expensive land is going to be underwater in 100 years. Land owned by the wealthy (so you KNOW the senators they have in their pockets aren't going to allow them to lose anything). I predict that people won't do anything, and then will demand government to bail them out when their land is routinely flooding. I could see possibly building seawalls around some areas that are simply too valuable/expensive to relocate (which will be expensive). Whether it's Miami, or Charleston, or NYC, won't matter. Someone is going to lose a lot of money. In this country we privatize the gains, and socialize the losses. So it will be taxpayers.

And it will be in slow-motion, so I expect a lot more attempts at remediation than relocation. "Oh, it's just a little flooding...build a wall." "Oh, that wall we built 20 years ago needs to be a bit higher and stronger." Etc.

We're not China. We aren't going to order people to relocate, nor have them eat their losses. The poor may actually have an easier time of it because they don't own much, and so don't stand to lose much. They just move when the lease is up.