Maggie's Farm

Well, there would be downsides, with so much of the world's population living on coast. We'd have less land in general, and the amount of infrastructure it would take to move LA or NYC would be enormous. Still, point taken. Canada has enormous fresh water resources, for example, and the taiga is still effectively limitless.

More generally, would a rise of 3 feet - very much on the high end of even catastrophic estimates for the next century - cause young people to cease falling in love? Would wine cease to gladden? Would the writing of music stop and friendship cease to be? We reflexively think that we should care about posterity because of children and grandchildren, but when we really think it out, what is our basis for caring about people, even our own direct descendants, 200 years out? We have been taught to regard it as selfish not to think of them, but a few moments' thought will reveal that this is not so. We might not even like those people. Even the Americans. Even our own great-greats. I look at my forebears of 1814 and consider myself and my cousins. I don't think the former would like the latter very much. If they have not preserved in their culture what we consider important in ours, screw 'em. The mere perpetuation of animals that look like us interests me not at all.

And after reading Out of the Silent Planet, I am deeply suspicious of those who believe that their goals are directed to posterity, when they are in fact directed only a few decades out, and more selfish even than I.

Well, the fashion is settled. They're dead right about that.