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 »Global Warming Is Coming For Your Home
April 12th, 2024
Via The Economist, a report on climate change’s impact on housing: Think about the places vulnerable to climate change, and you might picture rice paddies in Bangladesh or low-lying islands in the Pacific. But another, more surprising answer ought to be your own house. About a tenth of the world’s residential property by value is under threat from global […]
Read more »In Florida, Skyrocketing Insurance Rates Test Resolve of Homeowners in Risky Areas
March 31st, 2024
Courtesy of Inside Climate News, an article on new research showing the soaring costs hint at widespread, unpriced risk as the global climate warms, with states like California, Florida and Louisiana hit hardest: For most of his life, Cory Infinger has lived down a hill and along a bend in the Little Wekiva River, a […]
Read more »He’s Got a Plan for Cities That Flood: Stop Fighting the Water
March 29th, 2024
Courtesy of the New York Times, an article on one Chinese landscape architect in China who has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change: Cities around the world face a daunting challenge in the era of climate change: Supercharged rainstorms are turning streets into rivers, flooding subway […]
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 »'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.