The Jakarta Parable: Reimagining Urban Areas In A Warming Planet
June 3rd, 2025
Via Forbes, a look at how urban areas will have to be reimagined in a warming world: As climate risks intensify — rising seas, extreme heat, and ever-more-frequent storms—cities are being forced to confront a new reality. For centuries, urban centers have been magnets for people, capital, and innovation. Now, they are on the frontlines […]
Read more »India: Overlooking Climate Drag On Its Economic Growth
May 31st, 2025
Courtesy of The Financial Times, commentary on how India is overlooking the climate drag on its economic growth: The November COP29 summit ended predictably: a last-minute, watered-down commitment to support developing countries in their urgent climate adaptation efforts was delivered. India’s delegate then led the equally predictable outcry with a fiery diatribe against the paltry […]
Read more »Reforesting the Elm City
April 21st, 2025
Via Yale Alumni Magazine, a report on the Urban Resources Initiative is planting thousands of trees to make New Haven a cooler city: At first, planting street trees in New Haven was nothing more than a job for William “The Muscle” Tisdale. “I never paid too much attention to trees,” he says. He appreciated steady work […]
Read more »The History of Heat Waves Reveals the Urgency of Adaptation
March 21st, 2025
Via Harvard’s Salata Institute, a report on the relationship between humans and heat continues to change. Heat waves, once simply a natural phenomenon, are now a symptom of urbanization and global warming. As the equinox approaches and the sun rises higher in the sky, people throughout the northern hemisphere wonder: How hot will it get? […]
Read more »Why Sizzling Cities Are Mapping Hot Spots Street-By-Street
March 6th, 2025
Via Knowable, a report on how – in metros like Reno, Nevada – citizen scientists hit the road to collect detailed temperature data — key to taming urban heat, saving lives and designing for a cooler future: The city of Reno, Nevada, is breaking records in ways it doesn’t like: A 2024 analysis of 241 […]
Read more »Reforesting the Elm City
March 3rd, 2025
Via Yale Alumni Magazine, an article on an initiative planting thousands of trees to make New Haven a cooler city: At first, planting street trees in New Haven was nothing more than a job for William “The Muscle” Tisdale. “I never paid too much attention to trees,” he says. He appreciated steady work with Yale’s […]
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.