"It's too late to do anything, or its too hard.", or even, "Why should we do anything when THEY will do nothing?", is a step up from "There is no problem at all", or even "Its all a hoax perpetrated by a conspiracy of socialist intellectuals".

It may be too late to turn this ship around, at least in our lifetimes, no matter what we do. It snuck up on us too quickly, its moving too fast, its too big, and the crew is too lazy, too stupid or too cheap to do anything. But we can take steps to mitigate the damage and spread it out in time and space, giving us time to adjust to the new world we've created.

The efforts at the municipal level are not aimed at stopping climate change, but at dealing with its effects. Better land management practices could extend our water resources, and good zoning and land use regulations could protect infrastructure and private property. We have to get away from the idea that the only value of land today is what we can sell it for tomorrow.

One thing I would do if I were king is forbid all new construction on the barrier islands, and as buildings aged and were abandoned I would replace them with sand dunes, shore vegetation and mangrove swamps--i.e., return the land to its natural state so it could remain productive (as an attraction for tourists) and to protect mainland properties from storm damage. This would do nothing to stop rising seas, but would buy us more time, and the costs would be spread out over more time and people.

But Florida is an essentially cannibalistic state. It produces little of value, its primary source of economic nourishment is to feed on itself: people sell each other real estate, and tear down what's perfectly useful just to be able to rebuild it for profit. The idea that land has an intrinsic economic value in itself, not just as a place to locate structures and settlements but to renew environmental resources, has been forgotten in our desperation to make it into a commodity that can be turned over and over until the last owner gets stuck holding the bag.

We can learn a lesson from Louisiana, where construction by the oil industry (canals, shipping channels and dykes), and pollution led to increased loss of vegetation and erosion that has caused enormous damage to the Mississippi river delta. The sea is encroaching onto the land, and a subsiding New Orleans has become increasingly vulnerable to storms, relying solely on its levees for protection.

When the local State agency set up to address these problems after Katrina successfully sued the oil industry for financial help in restoring some of the damage they had caused, the state legislature passed ex post facto legislation to prevent them from doing so.

I suspect much the same thing will happen in Florida.