Back in 2022, a Swedish startup called Corvid Cleaning made headlines by launching a pilot program in the city of Södertälje involving an operant conditioning device in the city's public realm. The machine allowed crows — which, it turns out, are pretty smart and social animals — to deposit discarded cigarette butts in exchange for food.

The machine itself would scan whatever the crows brought in, and if it was, in fact, a dirty butt, the machine automatically dispensed a small piece of food, such as a peanut. And because crows are social animals, the thinking was that they would then run and tell their friends, "Hey, I found us a great dinner spot!"

It's an alluring and unexpected concept. The hope was to slash the city's annual cleaning bill by getting the crows to do our dirty work. And that's why this "new pilot" seems to go viral periodically. But the reality is that Corvid Cleaning filed for bankruptcy in 2025 and, as far as I'm aware, this has in no way taken off as a viable solution for keeping our streets free of cigarettes.

The obvious problem is that cigarette butts are highly toxic, and so encouraging animals to transport them around is a suboptimal solution. Supposedly, crows are also a little too smart, and they started to try to game the system. Regardless, the prototype is dead. If only more of us could be like the Japanese, and not throw our garbage on the street.

Cover photo by Fatemeh Heidari

I was recently debating with a friend about climate risk in Florida. He is less concerned about climate risk than I am and part of his argument was, "Why would the world's elite move to Florida only to get pushed out by sea-level rise in the near future?"

My view is that we shouldn't necessarily view the migration of high-net-worth individuals to the state as clear confirmation that they all believe everything will be fine (though I'm sure some or many do). Instead, I see it as rational consumer and economic behavior.

If you're a wealthy individual and have the means to be highly mobile, Florida offers two obvious benefits: warm winters and lower taxes (including little to no risk of something like a California wealth tax).

Let's look at some numbers.

If you had a $100 million capital gain from your private placement in SpaceX and you switched your tax residency from New York City to Miami, you would save 14.776% in state (10.9%) and city (3.876%) taxes, equaling about $14.8 million at t = 0 (definitely not tax advice!).

You could then use these tax savings to buy a waterfront home and get this benefit for all future income streams. In addition, you would get the benefit of warm winters going forward and the optionality of bottle service at LIV whenever you want to see David Guetta. I'm personally not an EDM fan. I prefer house and techno, but to each their own.

So in a total doomsday scenario, if the market started pricing in climate risk and your $14.8M waterfront property went to $0 at t = 10 years, it would still be a rational lifestyle and economic decision. And if the value destruction happened at t = 25 years, it would matter even less. It's probably outside of the forecasting period.

For wealthy people, the value of their personal residence generally makes up a much smaller percentage of their net worth compared to that of the middle class. And my assumption is that the wealthy are making self-serving economic decisions and/or they really want to live in Florida for lifestyle reasons.

The greater concern is for less-wealthy people for whom an erosion in principal residence value would have a more meaningful impact on their financial health. At a certain point, the tax benefits and lifestyle benefits may not outweigh the climate risks, assuming you believe this is a risk in the foreseeable future.

Cover photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash

Science:

Since at least 2008, scientists have warned that unchecked groundwater pumping for the city and for agriculture was rapidly draining [Iran’s] aquifers. The overuse did not just deplete underground reserves—it destroyed them, as the land compressed and sank irreversibly. One recent study found that Iran’s central plateau, where most of the country’s aquifers are located, is sinking by more than 35 centimeters each year. As a result, the aquifers lose about 1.7 billion cubic meters of water annually as the ground is permanently crushed, leaving no space for underground water storage to recover, says Darío Solano, a geoscientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who was not involved with the study.

Some of the largest cities in the world, including São Paulo, Mexico City, Cape Town, Bangalore, and Tehran, are today facing critical water shortages. In the case of Tehran, the situation is so dire that Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian has publicly said that the country now has no choice but to move its capital from Tehran to the southern part of the country:

Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country’s president has said.

The situation in Tehran is the result of “a perfect storm of climate change and corruption,” says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

“We no longer have a choice,” said Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during a speech on Thursday.

This will be expensive, and it won’t solve all of the country’s problems, but forcing a bunch of people out of the city will help to relieve some of the localized pressures. Tehran has a population of nearly 10 million, and the metro region is estimated at over 14 million, making it the second largest city in the Middle East.

Of course, there’s a city-building lesson in all of this: If you’re at this stage of capitulation, it means you’re too late. Water scarcity is about physical scarcity, but it’s generally also a failure of governance, infrastructure, and demand management. Proactive adaptation is always cheaper, easier, and safer than waiting until the last minute to adopt desperate measures.

Cover photo by Behnam Norouzi on Unsplash