The sad irony is that the thing that will be the undoing of the pristine island chain won't be the rising sea; instead it will be the thumping of the fragile ecosystems by millions of tourists cavorting and traversing around the place, and dealing with all their waste.
Added to the irony is the hypocrisy in that a great many of the tourists visiting the Maldives, and contributing to the environmental degradation, would identify as environmentally concerned citizens and would see themselves as making a pilgrimage to the island chain to witness the natural beauty before it gets swallowed up by the sea.
