Once upon a time, the great King Canute, strolling on a beach with his courtiers, ordered the waves to halt. Yet they kept on coming. It was a lesson intended for the monarch’s fawning sycophants. Canute was showing them that there are limits to power. Even a king can’t stop the sea! 

The Outer Banks area of North Carolina where storm damage shows how vulnerable coastal locations are. This lesson seems to have been lost on the members of North Carolina’s legislature. They are getting ready to vote on a bill that would prohibit government agencies from preparing for the estimated three feet rise in coastal sea levels which a state-appointed science panel has predicted will occur before the end of the current century.