Vice Motherboard: Vancouver Considers Abandoning Parts of the Coast Because of Climate Change
Not a terrible idea
Published in
1 min readNov 7, 2016
This week, Vancouver officials put out a report laying out plenty of options to deal with sea level rise, including barriers, dykes, and seawalls. But it also suggests that, at least in some parts of the city, they may want to consider just getting people out of the way. The option of retreat from the coast is on the table in Vancouver, and other cities might soon follow.
This is the kind of thinking we’ll need to see more and more of over the coming decades. Does it make more sense to invest billions of taxpayer dollars in new infrastructure, most of which would eventually need to be replaced, or instead to start thinking about how to move people away from areas of potential impact?
