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Plan B
Acting in accordance with Plan B would mean going into immediate and complete mobilization, racing against time to prevent the kind of sea-level rise that would result from the continuation of business as usual. However, even this will not prevent continued sea-level rise from causing much distress over the next 30 years, because a great amount of further sea-level rise is already built into the system. As Romm pointed out in Hell and High Water, global warming has already guaranteed that while it will “feel like hell” in many parts of the world, global warming will also produce a lot of “high water” in many parts of the world. But if Plan B is followed, the high water may quit rising before it drives many billions of people to migrate or move inland.
Advocating the need for Plan B will, of course, be controversial, because explaining the need for it will require pointing out that, according to current projections, long-term investments in expensive coastal properties would no longer be wise. The North Carolina Senate dealt with this problem by passing a law in 2012 saying that state agencies would need to base all assumptions about sea-level rise solely on linear projections from historical data, meaning they must assume that the sea level will rise only 8 inches. Faux-conservative comedian Stephen Colbert reported: “Scientists predict an economy-destroying, 39-inch sea level rise, but North Carolina drafts a law to make it eight inches.”

Plan A
If business as usual continues, the sea level will rise by “around 1 foot by 2050, then 4 to 6 feet (or more) by 2100, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter,” said Romm. Moreover, if business as usual continues, the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica will disintegrate, bringing about an additional sea-level rise of 39 feet, which would completely submerge the lands of the approximately 650 million people who live in coastal areas that are less than 33 feet above sea level. Plan A, which means “continuing to do nothing,” will mean simply writing off not only the island nations but also the most populous and agricultural portions of China and many other countries - and even some of America’s leading cities, including Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.