The optics on a new hotel in the Maldives are pretty terrible.
In a tiny nation that will likely be underwater due to sea level rise within the next century, an American luxury hotel chain is constructing an underwater hotel room that the world’s wealthiest will be able to reserve for $50,000 a night. No one seems to have noticed the irony. But it’s hard to imagine a more perfect example of the way we think about climate change: a scary thing that will happen at some point in the future but not a problem worth mentioning in the present.
With sea levels rising, it’s unlikely this will be the last submerged hotel in the Maldives. If nothing else though, it ought to be the last one that’s intentionally built to be underwater.