The Irish Examiner View: Hope will not trump science

Work started on a £100m flood barrier in Boston, Lincolnshire, just over a year ago and it will be completed this year. A moveable gate being built across the River Witham and is intended to protect around 17,000 properties in the town, which has a population of 70,000, about one sixth of the population of greater Cork.

That is one of Britain’s face-reality responses to rising sea levels.

Among others are tentative preparations for a public discussion on which coastal areas might be defended against rising seas and which areas might be abandoned. One side of that coin will be hugely expensive and the other very difficult.

The very same issues will force us to make equally hard, expensive decisions, too. Yet, as is our wont, we kick the can along the road, hoping optimism will trump science.

Not only that, but every week seems to bring announcements about new, multi-million developments in parts of cities already susceptible to occasional flooding.

If the science is correct, and there is no rational reason to imagine it’s not, the frequency and scale of those floods will go in only one direction.

In a society so committed to development, so in thrall to growth and expansion, it may be considered almost treasonous to even ask if those private developments should be pushed far beyond the predicted flood high-water marks, especially as any clean-up costs will have consequences for the public purse.

And it’s not as if the future is utterly unknown.