Becoming a ‘Sponge City’ at Shenzhen Speed
September 6th, 2023 Via The Diplomat, a look at how Shenzhen is a prime example of China’s Sponge City Program, which aims to both prevent flooding and increase water supply in urban areas: In 2017, the city of [...]
Paris Aims To Expand Urban Cooling System That Uses Seine River Water
September 6th, 2023 Via Reuters, a report on Paris’ growing use of river water for urban cooling: The city of Paris plans to expand an urban cooling system that draws on water from the Seine river as it seeks to [...]
Making Cities More Absorbent: The Porous City Network
September 6th, 2023 Via Bloomberg, a look at efforts to make cities more absorbent: Kotchakorn Voraakhom is the founder and CEO of Landprocess, a landscape architecture company in Bangkok whose designs incorporate [...]
Cooling the Heat: Can India Lead the World in Green Cooling Innovation
September 5th, 2023 Via the World Bank, commentary on India’s potential to help develop innovations to adapt to extreme heat: In recent months, India has broken several temperature records, recording its hottest [...]
New Air-Conditioning Technology Could Be the Future of Cool
September 4th, 2023 Via Scientific American, an article on new air conditioning technology that aims to reduce cooling’s impact to global warming: This past July was the hottest recorded month in human history. [...]
Chicago Is Spending $3.8 Billion to Fight Flooding. It Might Not Be Enough.
September 2nd, 2023 The Wall Street Journal describes Chicago’s $3.8 billion flood control plan as being both ambitious and inadequate, an inadequacy arising from the assumption that future rain events will be [...]

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.