Louisiana’s Shrinking Coast Offers a Narrowing Window for Managed Retreat
May 6th, 2026
Via Yale School of Environment, a report on Louisiana, which is losing its coast faster than anywhere else in the U.S. What happens next could become a blueprint — or a warning — for vulnerable communities around the globe. Louisiana’s coast is disappearing, and its population has already started to retreat. The shoreline, the most […]
Read more »Taking On Water: Can Sponge Cities Save Us from the Coming Floods?
April 25th, 2026
Courtesy of The New Yorker, a look at how – as the planet gets warmer and the rains fall harder – the future of flood control is looking less like a wall and something more like a park: On October 29, 2025, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released an update to its Climate Resilience Roadmap. In […]
Read more »Indonesia’s Coastal Erosion Crisis Triggers $80bn Seawall Bet
March 28th, 2026
Via Nikkei Asia, a report on Indonesia’s grand 500km wall plan; Java villages, businesses sink as waves encroach: On the northern coast of Java, fisherman Ahmad Sarif sees the sea steadily swallowing land at high tide every time he comes home from work in Bogorame village. Sarif, a village elder, told Nikkei Asia earlier this […]
Read more »Protecting Coasts Without Cooking The Planet
January 7th, 2026
Via the Salata Institute, an interesting look at how low-carbon, low-cost coastal resilience is possible if designers, builders, and policymakers work together: In the 2010s, when New York City decided to fortify the East River Promenade in the Lower East Side, it turned to a typical solution: emissions-intensive concrete and steel. Around the same time, […]
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 »New York Is Going to Flood. Here’s What the City Can Do to Survive.
October 17th, 2025
Via New York Times, a look at New York City’s flooded future: The waters surrounding New York allowed it to grow into an economic powerhouse. But what has been a blessing is increasingly a threat, as flooding becomes one of the city’s greatest challenges. By 2080, nearly 30 percent of the city’s land mass could […]
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.