The Dead Zone: What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century
December 9th, 2025
Via The Atlantic, a look at how many places in the U.S. may become uninhabitable. Many people may be on their own. Earlier this year, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, a graveyard was spared by the fire that sent thousands of Los Angeles residents fleeing into the coal-black night. Here, in Mountain […]
Read more »India’s Buildings Could Be a Big Part of Its Climate Solution
December 8th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, an interesting look at how integrating solar directly into India’s buildings could turn homes and offices into decentralized power plants and cut emissions right where they begin: By 2060, the total floor area of buildings worldwide is expected to double. Most of the expansion will take place in emerging economies in Asia, Africa, […]
Read more »Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings
December 1st, 2025
Via the New York Times, a report on Zillow’s decision to remove climate score aimed to predict a property’s risk from fires, floods and storms: Zillow, the country’s largest real estate listings site, has quietly removed a feature that showed the risks from extreme weather for more than one million home sale listings on its […]
Read more »How ‘Super Roofs’ Reward Insurers, Cat Bond Investors and Homeowners
December 1st, 2025
Via Bloomberg, a look at novel program run by North Carolina’s insurer of last resort that incentivizes homeowners to install roofs that can stand up to extreme winds: North Carolina has issued a $600 million catastrophe bond to fund disaster preparedness and reward homeowners for installing “super roofs” that are resistant to wind damage. The […]
Read more »Climate ‘Shock’ Is Eroding Some Home Values. New Data Shows How Much.
November 19th, 2025
Via New York Times, a look at how climate ‘shock’ is eroding home values: Even after she escaped rising floodwaters by wading away from her home in chest-deep water during Hurricane Rita in 2005, Sandra Rojas, now 69, stayed put. A fifth-generation resident of Lafitte, La., a small coastal community, she raised her home with […]
Read more »Concrete Could Turn Your House Into A Battery
November 19th, 2025
Via Anthropocene Magazine, a look at how the amount of concrete that goes into an average American home’s basement wall could hold enough energy to meet the daily needs of the household: After water, concrete is the most-used material in the world. And now, researchers have given this ubiquitous building material super powers. A Massachusetts […]
Read more »'Black Swans' are highly improbable events that come as a surprise, have major disruptive effects, and that are often rationalized after the fact as if they had been predictable to begin with. In our rapidly warming world, such events are occurring ever more frequently and include wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and drought.
'Green Shoots' is a term used to describe signs of economic recovery or positive data during a downturn. It references a period of growth and recovery, when plants start to show signs of health and life, and, therefore, has been employed as a metaphor for a recovering economy.
It is my hope that Black Swans / Green Shoots will help readers understand both climate-activated risk and opportunity so that you may invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. I believe that the tools of business and finance can help individuals, businesses, and global society make informed choices about who and what to protect, and I hope that this blog provides some insight into the policy and private sector tools used to assess investments in resilient reinforcement, response, or recovery.