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For millions of Americans, climate change has already passed the point of no return: no matter what action the world tries to take, their cities will be submerged by rising sea levels.
Scientists have identified 414 towns and cities in the United States that are guaranteed to eventually be underwater, regardless of how much humans decrease their carbon emissions.
"Historic carbon emissions have already locked in enough future sea level rise to submerge most of the homes in each of several hundred American towns and cities," said a statement on the website of Climate Central, the group who conducted the study.
Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the doomsday list has on it the names of major population centres, including Miami and New Orleans.
At least 40 per cent of the people said to be living on potentially affected land live in Florida, America's ‘Sunshine State’.
Low, flat, and a peninsula, much of the state, including the land that Miami is built on is formed of “porous limestone”, Benjamin Strauss, the lead author of the study told the Huffington post.
“The bedrock underneath Miami is a lot like Swiss cheese," he said. "Water can just go through it and so building levees is not going to be effective in South Florida," he said.
It’s not clear how much time these areas have left, but the study concludes their eventual fate is a certainty.
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Scientists said they hoped the study would act as a rallying call to action for cities that can still be saved by a reduction of carbon emissions.
"The most interesting thing to me is there are a great deal of cities where our carbon choices make a huge difference," Mr Strauss said.
Unless they take drastic action soon New York will pass its ‘lock in date” – or the point from which there is no going back: “The very biggest difference of all is for New York City, where you can avoid submergence of land where one and a half million people live,” said Mr Strauss.
A graphic made by Carbon Central, the organisation where Mr Strauss works, shows clearly how vast swathes of the Big Apple will disappear under water if pollution is left unchecked.
Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, Sacramento, and Jacksonville are all also extremely at risk.
"To me this is really a question of our American legacy and American heritage,"Mr Strauss said. "Are we going to let the ocean take a state-sized bite out of America? If we make extreme efforts to cut carbon, we can avoid that."
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