Waterproofing the Netherlands

Wired Magazine, Before the Levees Break: A Plan to Save the Netherlands:

New projections of sea-level rise and other potential consequences of climate change, coupled with the aftershock from Hurricane Katrina, have prompted Dutch officials to ask a very big question: What would it take to climate-proof our country for the next 200 years?

200 year plan?! 100 years?! Right or not, I really admire the long-term thinking. Are we even capable of thinking on that scale in this country?

Veerman talks about Dutch can-do the way generals talk about staying the course in a prolonged military battle. “People say sea-level rise will push us back into the hinterlands,” he says. “We say no, we can manage with 1, 2, even 3 meters. But we have to act.” With a black pen, he inks in an expanded coastline on the map laid out before him. Extending the country westward will be a colossal reclamation effort: Dredging ships, working just offshore, would spend the next century vacuuming up roughly 121 million cubic meters of seafloor sand every year and spraying it toward the shoreline, where wave action would then deposit it at the water’s edge and “naturally” build the beach outward. Over the course of 100 years, the project would add about 400 square miles to the Netherlands—roughly equivalent to 17 Manhattans.

A September report pegs the cost around $1.5 billion a year for the next 100 years.

Sounds like a bargain. Even if the lunatic fringe skeptics turn out to be right and we’re actually in a cooling era, it doesn’t sound so bad when you consider the trillions we’re spending on wars and financial crises. Kinda like an insurance policy you pay for and hope you never need.