History shows there is no technological reason why the nation could not stay in the middle of the Pacific even if sea levels rose several feet

 Tong’s imagination has been stirred by a more futuristic vision. It’s possible he’s seen the “Lilypad” floating city concept by the Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. This “ecopolis” would not only be able to produce its own energy through solar, wind, tidal and biomass but would also process CO2 in the atmosphere and absorb it into its titanium dioxide skin.

Bangkok architects S+PBA have come up with the idea of a floating “ wetropolis” to replace eventually the metropolis of Bangkok. They say that Bangkok is founded on marshes and with sea levels rising several centimetres a year and the population growing fast, it’s cheaper and more ecologically sound to embrace the rising seas than fight them.

Stranger still could be the German architect Wolf Hilbertz’s idea for a self-assembling sea city called Autopia Ampere. Hilbertz plans to use the process of electrodeposition to create an island that would build itself in the water. It would begin as a series of wire mesh armatures connected to a supply of low-voltage direct current produced by solar panels. The electrochemical reactions would draw up sea minerals over time, creating walls of calcium carbonate on the armatures.

Islands have always fascinated political utopians, and now the billionaire hedge-fund manager and technology utopian Peter Thiel, has linked with Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer and grandson of Nobel prize-winning free market economist Milton Friedman to envisage a libertarian floating country.