2020 was the hottest year on recorded history–a fact quite evident in the western U.S. Phoenix hit 144 days of 100 degree-plus days. Ten million acres of U.S. forests burned, filling the skies with dense smoke, and turning metropolises like Los Angeles into hellscapes.

As bad as 2020 was, recent drought figures show 2021 could be much worse, with water levels in the majority of western states being at unprecedented lows.
To be clear, much of the U.S., its peoples, lands, cities, and properties face mortal short and long-term dangers, yet current political and market responses are inadequate, unscientific, and typically amount to greening an intrinsically carbon-rich status quo, replete with cars, single family homes, and China-built, overnight Prime shopping.
With high temperatures and fires getting a healthy start 2021, it’s evident that an incremental approach to protecting people and places from the impacts of global warming–as well as eliminating the underlying GHG “drivers”–will not prepare anyone or anything in the necessary timeframe….which was yesterday.
There needs to be a wholesale transformation of almost every aspect of modern life in order to give humankind a fighting chance of surviving the climate-related mass-extinction events that are on the near-horizon.
In our podcast, Mike, Greg, and I discuss the climate situation, the barriers to progress, and steps municipalities, developers, investors, citizens, and other real estate stakeholders can do to instigate a planet-and-people focused transformation of the built world and market economies.
The podcast is designed to showcase the Change Order Group’s thinking and capabilities. If you’re a developer, investor, municipality, or other real estate stakeholder interested in aggressively solving today’s most pressing environmental, social, and technical challenges, drop us a line. Our services include:
- Research reporting. Our team has an unmatched reputation for being as far as in the future as most humans care to go. Our research capabilities include high level market, economic, climate, cultural, and design forecasting as well as in depth technical AEC, mobility, energy, and master-planning problem solving.
- Risk and underwriting analysis and technical, robust risk mitigation planning.
- Marketing, PR, and lobbying support for aligned projects and initiatives.
- Day sessions and speaking.
- Master-planning, with strong focus on resilience, water, food, waste, energy, social, and economic systems.
- Architectural referral services.*
- Site analysis and deal sourcing.
- Construction management.
If you’re interested in finding our more, drop us a line.
*Change Order Group, LLC is not a licensed architectural firm, but has licensed architects in New York and Washington States. We welcome collaborations with regional architects.