Toronto Wants to Manage Storms and Floods—With a Rain Tax
April 14th, 2024
Via Canada’s National Observer, an article on the outcry in Toronto that reached such a crescendo last week that the city canceled public hearings on the tax, which is intended to help offset the hundreds of millions spent managing stormwater and basement flooding: A plan to charge Toronto homeowners and businesses for paved surfaces on […]
Read more »Slow Water: Can We Tame Urban Floods By Going With The Flow?
April 12th, 2024
Via The Guardian, a look at urban flooding: After epic floods in India, South Africa, Germany, New York and Canada killed hundreds in the past year, droughts are now parching landscapes and wilting crops across the western US, the Horn of Africa and Iraq. The responses have included calls for higher levees, bigger drains and longer aqueducts. But these concrete interventions aimed at controlling water are […]
Read more »The Designer Who’s Trying to Transform Cities Into Sponges
March 15th, 2024
Via Wired, an article on Kongjian Yu who pioneered China’s “sponge city” concept—less concrete and more green spaces to exploit stormwater instead of fighting it. Metropolises all over the world are following suit: Your city isn’t prepared for what’s coming. The classical method for dealing with stormwater is to get it out of town as […]
Read more »New York City Ready to Expand Greenways Along Rivers, Railways and Parks
March 9th, 2024
Via Inside Climate News, a look at efforts in New York to expand multi-use paths protected from vehicle traffic toconnect the city’s boroughs and help increase climate resilience as rainfall, flooding and storms all become more intense: New York City is poised for a year of opportunity with the opening of miles of city-wide greenways, a […]
Read more »US Cities Could Be Capturing Billions of Gallons of Rain a Day
March 2nd, 2024
Via Wired, a report on how – with better infrastructure and “spongy” green spaces – U.S. urban areas have made progress but should be soaking up way more free stormwater: YOUR CITY IS a scab on the landscape: sidewalks, roads, parking lots, rooftops—the built environment repels water into sewers and then into the environment. Urban planners have been […]
Read more »Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be
February 20th, 2024
Via Wired, a look at how – as relentless rains pounded LA – the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year: Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 […]
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.