First, let us take climate change out
of the debate. The rising sea levels and increase in extreme weather
caused by greenhouse gas generated global warming make it more urgent
to sort out these issues, but they are not the force that drives these issues. The
sea has always eaten the coastline at one place and built it at
another. History is freckled with tales of man’s futile attempt to
stay the ravages of nature and hang onto a particular speck where he
has put his mark. (Do not be offended, ladies, by the masculine
pronoun. Our ancestral mothers were smart enough to pull up stumps
whenever Gaia raised her finger to scold.)
Secondly, all attempts by Man to arrest
natural progression lead to greater disasters than they avoid.
Walling New Orleans simply created a
fragile bowl that continues to sink into the Mississippi finger
delta. The irrigation channels constructed across the Middle East
have disappeared beneath the sands of the desert they created. The
shrimp farms of the increasingly salty delta of Bangladesh accelerate
the that nation’s slide into the Bay of Bengal. The rock walls we
built to keep open our river mouths have simply altered the patterns
of the shifting sands, scouring out one side and building up the
other.
Thirdly, members of a community stick
up for each other against external oppression. Yet, when we see one of our
own fumbling drunkenly with his car keys, we embrace
paternalism for long enought to apply the necessary force to get those car keys back.
And so, we must stop these modern deniers of Canute
from squandering our resources on attempting to defy the waves. They
not only harm themselves but they damage the environment and further
enrage Gaia. That’s why, fifteen years ago, the Belongil spit was
declared unsuitable for permanent dwellings. That’s why, all over the
globe, regulatory authorities refuse to allow development on low
lying coastal land. That’s why insurance companies are advising their
policy holders of radical changes in their policies regarding acts of god.
The waves have spoken. Retreat.
This article was first publishing in the Northern Star, an APN newspaper. Reprinted with permission.