Warren Karlenzig

With the Zika virus spreading in Florida, it’s timely to consider how we will prepare for our increasing real-time manifestations of climate change.

NASA’s new report on the likelihood of megadrought in the Central and Western United States is a harsh yet timely wake-up call for cities.

To some, these emerging markets or behaviours may seem trivial or non-significant. But when viewed ten years from now, they will be recognized as having chipped away at the military-industrial complex.

The National Climate Assessment findings mean that public policies will be of little value that are solely based on either past business or operating models, past (or even existing) resource or energy prices, as well as so-called “100-year” flood models.

The United States has reached an historic moment. The exurban development explosion that defined national growth during the past two decades has come to a screeching halt, according to the latest US Census figures. Only 1 of the 100 highest-growth US communities of 2006–all of them in sprawled areas–reported a significant population gain in 2011, prompting Yale economist Robert Shiller to predict suburbs overall may not see growth "during our lifetimes."

I’ve returned from a sobering United Nations-led tour of six tsunami-damaged communities and two radiation-impacted cities in Northern Japan. The obvious conclusion: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is forcing Japan to go green, including the launch of a new renewable energy national feed-in tariff that starts in July. Meanwhile the governor of Fukushima, Yuhei Sato, told us that renewables will be the “key factor” in the revival of his cesium-laden prefecture.