A Dutch Architect’s Vision of Cities That Float on Water
March 27th, 2024
Courtesy of The New Yorker, a look at if building on the water could be safer and sturdier than building on flood-prone land? In a corner of the Rijksmuseum hangs a seventeenth-century cityscape by the Dutch Golden Age painter Gerrit Berckheyde, “View of the Golden Bend in the Herengracht,” which depicts the construction of Baroque […]
Read more »Getting Off Fossil Fuels Is Hard, But This City Is Doing It – Building by Building
March 23rd, 2024
Via NPR, a feature on one city’s efforts to break its reliance on fossil fuels: ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Ithaca, N.Y., is learning that getting off fossil fuels is really hard. The U.S. aims to zero out climate warming greenhouse gases by the year 2050, but Ithaca wants to do that 20 years ahead of the […]
Read more »What Would Happen if Every American Got a Heat Pump
March 21st, 2024
Via Wired, a report on the projected impact of widespread adoption of heat pumps in the U.S.: One of the most powerful weapons you can wield to fight climate change is … an appliance. A heat pump is a fully electric device that transfers warmth from outdoor air into a building, then reverses in the summer to […]
Read more »Heat Pumps That Fit In Apartment Windows Promise Big Emissions Cuts
March 19th, 2024
Via AP News, a look at how heat pumps that fit in apartment windows promise big emissions cuts: For 27 years, the heat in Regina Fred’s Queens apartment building came from a noisy steam radiator that she couldn’t control and sometimes didn’t come on at all, leaving her shivering. Sometimes, the radiators ran so hot that […]
Read more »How One New Jersey Beach City Went From ‘Worst to First’ In Reducing Flood Risk
March 17th, 2024
Via Smart Cities Dive, a look at Sea Isle City’s success in reducing flood risk and building resilience: Sea Isle City, New Jersey, had a dismal flood management reputation for a long time — one so bad that the beach community almost got booted from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program in the […]
Read more »Where Heat Pumps Win — And Where They Lose
March 11th, 2024
Via Heat Map Daily, a report on five key findings from an extremely thorough study by the National Renewable Energy Lab: Some Americans install heat pumps because they care about climate change. But most people aren’t going to make the switch until it makes sense economically. Pinpointing where and for whom heat pumps make sense […]
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.