The deeply flawed political screed in the Guardian article by Matthew Engel posted about previously follows the dead fish picture with a diatribe against home building in the Outer Banks of N. Carolina that is historically inane, especially in this centennial year of the Wright brothers' historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in the Outer Banks, a place chosen for its strong and steady winds. Engel says:

Twenty years ago, these were, by all accounts, magical places, hard to reach and discovered only by the adventurous and discerning.

Roanoke Island, one of three major land areas in the Outer Banks, was the site of the very first English settlement in the Americas. It was founded in 1585 by Sir Walter Raleigh and named Virginia at the time in honor of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth who granted the patent. They built a fort and attempted to found a colony but it failed. Expeditions in 1587 and 1590 brought more settlers and military personnel but the colony was lost. In 1607 another colony was established at Jamestown - named for the new monarch James - not far from Roanoke, and this one endured. The area has been continuously occupied since then. There are many seaside villages with 300 years of history.

They are still fairly magical, at least the seemingly endless stretch of unspoiled beach is. It is the lure of that which causes the traffic jams on the only two bridges every Saturday throughout the summer. The narrow strip of land behind the beach, however, has been built up with enormous holiday homes, costing up to $2m (£1.2m) each. And prices rose by 15-20% (25% for those on the ocean front) in 2002 alone, according to one agent.

The Outer Banks have long been vacation destinations since they are cool in the summer compared to the mainland. The permanent population is much smaller than during the season, a pattern found all over the world at seaside resort areas.

This is what local agents call "a very nice market", and last month their area had a week of free worldwide publicity. Hurricane Isabel swept in, washing out much of the islands' only road and picking up motels from their foundations and tossing them, according to one report, "like cigarette butts". One island was turned into several islets, with a whole town, Hatteras Village, being cut off from the rest of the US - for ever, if nature has its way.

Hatteras has been occupied for 300 years. It has a permanent population in the thousands with hospitals, schools, chamber of commerce and all of the other elements of community. It has endured many hurricanes over the centuries and will endure many more.

Residents, journalists reported, were in shock. Many scientists were not. Speaking well before Isabel, Dr Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology at Duke University in North Carolina, described the Outer Banks property boom to me as "a form of societal madness". "I wouldn't buy a house on the front row of the Outer Banks. Or the second," agreed Dr Stephen Leatherman, who is such a connoisseur of American coastlines that he is known as Dr Beach.

For the market is not the only thing that has been rising round here. Like other experts, Pilkey expects the Atlantic to inundate the existing beaches "within two to four generations".

...

The madness of the Outer Banks seems like a symptom of, and a metaphor for, something far broader: the US is in denial about what is, beyond any question, potentially its most dangerous enemy.

The Outer Banks are subsiding, eroding and the sea is rising. The combined effect is an apparent sea level change of 2mm/year and loss of beaches during large storms. This is a process that has been going on forever with these islands built of sediment. Like many other places on the planet humans have built their homes in areas subject to flood. The Dutch live below sea level behind dykes. All along the Mississippi valley of the U.S. communities have been flooded repeatedly in years when the old river rises. The Thames river estuary and delta are subsiding and barriers have been built to limit storm surge. There is nothing unique about Outer Banks seaside settlements to distinguish them or make them subject to special criticism. There is nothing unique about U.S. behavior to suggest it is in denial. Compared to other parts of the world the U.S. seems quite sane and attentive to real issues while remaining comparatively resistant to the hysterical fads and vapors that afflict others.