"I'll take that south pole acre, as long as it's not on an ice river. talk about solar power abilities."
Not really. You only have sun for half the year, and the sunlight you do get is much less intense than at the equator.
"I would rather see dommed oceanic technology persued. but that also could have it's bad effects."
Everything does. It's a matter of trade offs..and personally I don't think we'll see many of these. Too dangerous, and I doubt you find many people eager to live somewhere where they can't go outside.
Here's a neat (and somewhat disturbing) example of what kind of problems dommed habits would have. Except in reverse.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/paul.clark/crabvspipe.html
PvK: it's not so much the land we're occupying, it's what is being done to everything else.
Phoenix-D