It would be completely disingenuous for me to say that making an exception for Venice is a "slippery slope", but I can't help thinking about the river behind my

It would be completely disingenuous for me to say that making an exception for Venice is a "slippery slope", but I can't help thinking about the river behind my house. I live in Japan by the ocean and they are widening the river by a factor of 3 -- literally digging up the banks, rebuilding them, dredging the bottom of the river, flattening it out, fortifying the banks with concrete and stone, etc. I hope they know what they are doing, but given how the river otter is now extinct in Japan (loss of habitat) and the river eel (unagi) has been decimated (loss of habitat)... I've got to wonder if they really care one way or another. The thing is, the town where I live will be decimated by any reasonable size tsunami that might happen. Rain fall amounts are rising and we're getting record floods pretty much every year (despite being in a rain shadow). The real answer is to move the city up on top of the nearby plateau which is about 100 m above sea level, but I guess widening the river buys them (ummm.... us....) some time. Generally speaking, I have to wonder whether it makes sense to try to save land that is only 3 m or so above sea level. And while I can completely understand your point about making a special case for Venice, I don't think we (as humans) are making special cases. I wonder whether we have any rational plans at all for mitigating the risks in these areas. Destroying the ecosystem and also getting flooded out seems like a pretty poor "compromise". Of course, in a pot meets kettle kind of admission, I don't currently have concrete plans to move out of my "very likely to be under water sometime in my lifetime abode". It's on my TODO list...