Shade Will Make or Break American Cities
August 10th, 2025 Courtesy of The Atlantic, a look at how shade will make or break American cities: On a 92-degree Saturday afternoon in Portland, Oregon, I went looking for shade in Cully Park, which was built on top [...]
Shade: The Promise Of A Forgotten Natural Resource.
August 10th, 2025 Via The Atlantic, a look at how — to survive a heating planet —humans need shade, lots of it: Every year, heat takes more lives than floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes combined. The fatalities [...]
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 [...]
‘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 [...]
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 [...]
Germans Are Finally Embracing Air Conditioning: Even AC for Renters
July 26th, 2025 Via Bloomberg, a look at the growing use of air conditioning in Europe: Many homes in Germany don’t have air conditioning and are now using portable units to cool down due to increasingly [...]

ABOUT
BLACK SWANS GREEN SHOOTS
Black Swans / Green Shoots examines the collision between urbanization and resource scarcity in a world affected by climate change, identifying opportunities to build sustainable cities and resilient infrastructure through the use of revolutionary capital, increased awareness, innovative technologies, and smart design to make a difference in the face of global and local climate perils.

'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.