North Carolina Beach Houses Have Fallen Into The Ocean. Is There A Fix?
June 19th, 2023
Courtesy of The Washington Post, an article on new studies that show that both beach nourishments and buyouts in Rodanthe, N.C., would be costly, but no funding for any fix is in sight: It’s been a rough stretch for Rodanthe, N.C., a scenic sliver of the Outer Banks where houses are crumbling into the ocean, […]
Read more »Five Ways Finance Is Trying to De-Risk Heat Waves
June 19th, 2023
Courtesy of Bloomberg, an article on how – from heatstroke insurance for humans to policies that reimburse farmers for lower milk output – more financial products are addressing climate change: Climate change-driven heat waves are impacting everything from nuclear reactors in France to glaciers in Pakistan. As millions of people around the world are forced to cope with more […]
Read more »The Quest To Build Wildfire-Resistant Homes
June 19th, 2023
Via MIT Technology Review, an article on how – with climate change making more communities vulnerable to fire across the world – adaptation may require more social change than materials engineering: The first sparks that ignited in the Montecito hills above Santa Barbara, California, on November 13, 2008, were stoked by ferocious sundowner winds gusting […]
Read more »Hot Cities, Chilled Economies: Impact Of Extreme Heat on Global Cities
June 19th, 2023
Via the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock), a report assessing the social and economic effects of extreme heat through the prism of twelve cities that are already enduring and addressing dramatic impacts of heat waves: Global summary The world is burning. Unfortunately, that’s not an exaggeration. Climate-driven heat is changing the way we live and work. […]
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.