Hurricane Melissa – ranking among the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes to make landfall – sees it differently. As does Jamaica:

One of the many things @ninalakhani.bsky.social does so well is show the very real, very now cost of climate change at the most human level. This story is devastatingly good: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Residential policyholders across California could be paying several hundred million dollars to help cover the costs of claims arising out of the January firestorms in Los Angeles County. Laurence Darmiento www.latimes.com/business/sto...

Accounting for $110 billion in special appropriations for disaster relief after Hurricanes Milton and Helene, the total cost of disaster relief in 2024 exceeded every discretionary federal budget item with the exception of education. No wonder they've stopped counting in 2025:

Our present politics -- even on the political left -- tends to overlook the potential for adaptive urbanism to reframe the way we think about cities. A new essay in Noema Magazine (@noemamag.com) explores this shortcoming of the abundance movement:

I explore the idea of adaptive urbanism in an essay on the missed opportunities of rebuilding after climate disasters -- we need to understand retreat as a process of renewal rather than one of abandonment:

The idea is simple. The choices that render cities too expensive, arduous to move through, and aesthetically uninspiring also elevate climate risk. Cities cannot be made more resilient to climate impacts without making them more affordable, navigable, and beautiful. I call this adaptive urbanism.