How should we respond to rising sea levels?

I am not going to try and answer that question right now. I am just going to direct you to two thought provoking articles. The first is from the Washington Post about how the National Park Service is responding on Assateague Island.....basically let nature take its course and adapt (retreat) as needed....for link click The Old Man and the Rising Sea and scroll down to the article.

Glacier calving - Bill Fintel photo

For new data on the increasing rate of glacial melting in Antarctica, see Antarctic glacial melt rate triples in Amundsen Sea embayment

Adapting to Climate Change

We most certainly will have to adapt to some degree of climate change, from rising sea levels, to rising land temperatures, to more droughts, to more monsoon rains, to more severe storms, and probably even to more GOV incompetence.

Now from the UK Guardian come some specific examples of what you and I can do:
Climate Change, a Survivors' Guide

In our class, I hope to explore further this concept of: "What Can We Do???"
because obviously, we are not going to avert global warming, and all its associated effects.

Prospects for Cancun, and a proposed plan

From the linked Wall Street Journal editorial by Bjorn Lomborg:
"Attendees in Cancun will be singing the same tune that they did last year: Nations must commit themselves to drastic, immediate carbon cuts. This ignores both economic reality and 20 years of experience that tell us that this policy choice is incredibly expensive, utterly ineffective and ultimately politically unsellable.

.................World-wide public spending on research and development for clean energy technologies is a paltry $2 billion a year. Increasing this to $100 billion a year could be a game-changer. Not only would it be almost twice as cheap as the $180 billion a year cost of fully implementing Kyoto, but the effect of this kind of spending would be hundreds of times greater. But this should not be our only response to global warming. We should also invest considerably more in adaptation to global warming's effects, and research geo-engineering technologies as a potential backstop."