I used to be scared of buying real estate in coastal cities for this very reason. Now I think of it this way... Maybe it's inevitable. And if it is, perhaps

I used to be scared of buying real estate in coastal cities for this very reason. Now I think of it this way... Maybe it's inevitable. And if it is, perhaps it's cheaper to build walls around cities if the cities are worth saving. Let's say it costs $100 billion to protect NYC - that's a cost they'll bear. It's still just on the order of 10K per person. If you amortize that over 10 years, it's not much. And there's too much valuable real estate to not do it. For the rest of the world? Well, there are ghost towns everywhere. New cities can be built that are inland. And again, that may be cheaper than trying to stop global warming. Or perhaps more feasible - we can start building cities as the waters rise, once there's less uncertainty. Just being the devil's advocate here.