‘Sponge City’: How Copenhagen Is Adapting to a Wetter Future
July 31st, 2025
Via Yale e360, an article on how climate change is bringing ever more precipitation and rising seas to low-lying Denmark. In response to troubling predictions, Copenhagen is enacting an ambitious plan to build hundreds of nature-based and engineered projects to soak up, store, and redistribute future floods. In just two hours on July 2, 2011, […]
Read more »Canada Is Home to the World’s Largest Solar Panel Mural: “A Bold Vision for the Future”
July 30th, 2025
Via Nice News, a report on the world’s largest solar panel mural: The apartment building pictured above might stop you in your tracks for its colorful tiles and striking artwork, but what you won’t pick up on at a glance is its status as the Guinness World Record holder for the world’s largest solar panel […]
Read more »Germans Are Finally Embracing Air Conditioning: Even AC for Renters
July 26th, 2025
Via Bloomberg, a look at the growing use of air conditioning in Europe: Many homes in Germany don’t have air conditioning and are now using portable units to cool down due to increasingly frequent heat waves. According to Marc Evans, “Air conditioning isn’t the solution to our problems, but it’s the only solution we have […]
Read more »How Old Dubai’s Historic Streets Beat Extreme Heat
July 22nd, 2025
Via BBC, a report on how some cities traditionally beat extreme heat: Soumya Gayatri (Credit: Soumya Gayatri) Long before our reliance on air-conditioning, Dubai’s old town kept people’s homes cool using a combination of clever techniques to lower the temperature. The same techniques are being revived again today. There’s no heat like the heat of […]
Read more »A Conversation with Dr. Kongjian Yu on Restoring Our “Sponge Planet”
July 22nd, 2025
Via China Water Risk, an interview with the “Father of Sponge Cities to see how concrete cities can become better-equipped for extreme rainfall & flash floods: After witnessing grey infrastructure collapse in the 1998 Yangtze floods, Dr. Yu developed the idea of a “sponge city” to restore water’s natural flows; Today it’s been adopted as […]
Read more »Cities Are Heating Up. Better Infrastructure Can Cool Them Down.
July 20th, 2025
Via WRI, a look at how better infrastructure can help cool cities: In a city, a grassy park might be a place to stretch out with a book, an asphalt road your route to work, a building wall a canvas for a mural. But beyond their familiar roles, each of these surfaces plays a critical […]
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.