Creating Climate-Smart Cities
August 6th, 2025
Via Yale School of the Environment, an article on how cities are on the front lines of climate change, but they also hold the key to reducing emissions: Rising temperatures are increasing the health risks of indoor heat stress for more than a billion people in urban areas across the Global South. Air conditioning can […]
Read more »‘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 »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 »Atlanta Embracing A Cheap, Effective Way To Beat Urban Heat: ‘Cool Roofs’
July 7th, 2025
Via Grist, a look at how – with white or reflective roofs significantly reducing temperatures – Atlanta is the latest city to mandate their adoption: Walk outside into 100-degree heat wearing a black shirt, and you’ll feel a whole lot hotter than if you were wearing white. Now think about your roof: If it’s also […]
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.