What can we do to save our coastline? The traditional approach is to strengthen sea defences, but most experts now believe this is a battle that cannot be won. Even if the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere levelled off tomorrow, sea levels would continue to rise - slowly - for centuries. And there is evidence that defences on one part of the coast can actually increase erosion elsewhere. In the long run it may be better to accept that we cannot hold back the sea. Even the Dutch, those legendary masters of coastal defence, are now planning to work with nature rather than against her.

The National Trust, which owns 1130 kilometres of our coastline, now accepts that it cannot protect all of its sites. Some will be allowed to erode away, like Formby Sands in Lancashire which is disappearing at the rate of three to four metres a year, while others will be left to flood. The trust is letting the sea come in and create new saltmarshes at Porlock in Somerset and near Newtown harbour on the Isle of Wight.

If global warming is not arrested then the consequences are dire. A team at University College London recently produced maps showing the effects of large sea level rises on the shape of the British Isles. A seven-metre rise, equivalent to the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, would inundate extensive swathes of the Fens and the Humber basin. Other areas under water include the Somerset levels and the coastal plains of Essex, Kent, Sussex and Lancashire, though no part of the British coast would remain untouched. Melting of the Antarctic ice sheets would have even more catastrophic consequences. But such outcomes presume that global warming is allowed to run away unchecked for centuries and we're not going to let that happen. Are we?

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