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 »India Is Using AI and Satellites to Map Urban Heat Vulnerability Down to the Building Level
June 23rd, 2025
Via Wired, a look at how remote-sensing data and artificial intelligence are mapping the most heat-vulnerable buildings in cities like Delhi, in an effort to target relief from extreme temperatures at a granular level. Zubaida starts her day at eight in the morning, sorting discarded plastics, glass, and chemicals with her bare hands, to collect items […]
Read more »How To See If Your City Is Poised To Bounce Back From The Next Climate Disaster
November 25th, 2024
Via The Washington Post, an article on how to see if your city is poised to bounce back from the next climate disaster: How do you pick a safe place to live? Climate scientists predict an intensifying barrage of hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, flooding and sea-level rise in many places. These disasters are already threatening, and even demolishing, homes. But risk is not all. Resilience, the […]
Read more »Nowhere in America Is Safe From Climate-Fueled Storms and Fires
October 4th, 2024
Via Bloomberg, a look at how billion-dollar weather disasters have touched every corner of the US in the past five years: Forecasters had warned for days that Hurricane Helene was likely to cause widespread devastation. But when the powerful storm struck Florida and barreled through the eastern US last week, killing more than 180 people […]
Read more »On-the-Move Americans Are Unwitting Storm Chasers
September 20th, 2024
Via the Wall Street Journal, a look at – as more people relocate to states exposed to natural disasters – the property investors following them are assuming bigger risks: Is it better to inherit property in Miami or Detroit? Florida’s much higher home prices mean the answer is obvious today. But intensifying storms and rising sea levels […]
Read more »How To Make Climate Risk Good Business
August 28th, 2024
An interesting TEDx talk examining h0w – by leveraging massive data stores that can be parsed and used predictively in the same way investors rely on these insights for stocks and interest rates – climate risk can turn into financial opportunity: The risk profiles of many real estate markets are rapidly increasing globally. Insurers and […]
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.