Floating building

Lake Union Floating Home

Global warming is eating up our land. According to the US National Research Council, global sea level rise could be anywhere between 22 and 79 inches in the 21st century alone. This, coupled with our global population expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050 (predominantly in developing nations) means there would be severe land scarcity in the near future.

The principle method being proposed to battle this is building huge levees that could keep water from engulfing large portions of the land. However, if history is any indication at all, it seems like  global sea level is going to keep rising for the coming few centuries, unless we do something drastic about it (which seems highly unlikely). So building levees and dikes does not seem like a sustainable solution, albeit something that might be built as an urgent measure. 

One of the major things we could do is to start concentrating on building floating buildings. By that I don’t mean a solitary building in the middle of the ocean but rather right off the coast or shore. A very good example is provided in the link and video below: 

 - Floating Buildings

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I find it interesting that these floating houses being built in the Netherlands are upscale and seem to indicate affluence as opposed to making it seem like living on water is a compromise.

This way, we would embrace the change and not be terribly affected when sea level rise becomes unmanageable. This could also be a much more cost effective solution to impoverished and developing nations. This is as they might lack the huge sums of money (in the tens of billions) needed to build levees and dikes that could mitigate sea level rise. It would be much less financially strenuous to such a nation as a whole to just gradually start building floating structures.