In The New Carbon Architecture, Bruce King and his merry band of authors unpack all of the ways in which we can eliminate embodied carbon emissions when constructing buildings, and even go beyond to construct carbon negative buildings.

Basically, they claim to have found the Holy Grail of the circular economy. They’ve developed a process to take generic waste that would otherwise be put in a landfill and turn it instead into a useful thermoplastic.

By burning fossil fuels these last couple hundred years, we’ve been borrowing against our carbon budget and our climate future. Trillions of tons of carbon have been spent into the atmosphere, and we now need to pay them back by returning them to the earth.

My friend Brett Howell helped lead an expedition to clean up what is considered, by one metric, to be the most polluted island in the world. It’s called Henderson Island, and it’s worth every bit of your time to read his story.

As this bucket fills, it shows humanity “using up” its carbon budget. What struck me most is how fast the rate of change has accelerated in the last few decades.

I love Hannon Armstrong’s simple and direct investment thesis: “We will earn better risk-adjusted returns by investing on the right side of the climate change line.”

I want to share a TED Talk that has been particularly influential on my thinking. I hope you enjoy and find it as inspiring as I did!

May the earth and her beauty grant you strength, especially with a new year right around the corner. Cheers friends!

It’s also a big deal that BlackRock became a Global Partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in October this year. In doing so, BlackRock signaled to the broader investment community, and to the entire corporate world, that it believes in creating the circular economy.