Dear Editor,

It may be nice to live within sight of the sea or a river, but it amazes me that people do not see how dangerous it is.  The sea sweeps away houses on low-lying areas by the beach, and houses on cliff tops.  These houses are usually expensive, but when they collapse the owners expect the rest of us taxpayers, who are not so silly or so rich as to buy risky houses, to pay for sea walls or other defences to protect them.  People who live on river banks are in exactly the same situation, particularly now floods are regular and deep.  It is no wonder such properties have become uninsurable unless the premiums are huge.

The last paragraph of your article about rising sea levels and storm surge hits the nail on the head.  The huge amount of water which has devastated Pakistan, like all other flood waters, ends up in the sea.  It is getting worse as Himalayan, Andes, and Alps glaciers melt, along with the Greenland icecap.  Hundred year floods now seem to happen every few years, if not more frequently.  We worry about man-made emissions, but are we taking into account the effect of bush and forest fires, and the CO2 they produce, in calculating how fast we are warming the planet?  If sea level rises a metre, those floods will be a metre higher too.  Why on earth would anyone with any intelligence buy a house on these proposed developments?  With a bit of luck they won’t, and the developments will not happen.

We should build on high ground which is little use for agriculture, and stop expanding settlements and cities in low-lying areas.

Yours faithfully,

Terry Stanton.

Tinonee