Like Global Warming, this “solution” was accepted because it supported the overall agenda.
The agenda in this case is to discourage oceanfront development, tourism and use by humans of the shorline. The shorline is to be preserved for wildlife and the very few humans wealthy or priviledged enough to partake of the rare beauty. So knocking down condos and kicking the hoi-polloi of the beach in order to plant mangrove trees has very little to do with Tsumanis.
Similarly with Global Warming, the agenda is to discorage American consumerism and energy consumption. The best way to do that is to make energy scarce and expensive. The best way to do that is with a carbon tax.
Bingo
“kicking the hoi-polloi off the beach in order to plant mangrove trees”
I don/t think the idea was so much to destroy high-end development, as to discourage destruction of mangrove swamps which are an important nursery to basic fish stocks which are unfortunately decreasing world-wide.
In June 2006 I traveled the hurricane coast from Tampa to New Orleans photographing and observing the damage. Where there was dense unbroken brush/forest/jungle, there was little impact, except that I could see debris like plastic sheet and garbage bags clinging to branches ten feet over my head. In another area where there were large full grown individual trees planted along the road, the hurricanes had swept right past and destroyed homes and gardens for three or four blocks inland. It was incredible!! So I would tend to think that “virgin” forest/jungle might be a reasonable barrier to most surges.