Brrrrh. It’s cold. Parts of the US are colder than Antarctica. Schools and businesses are closed throughout the frigid Midwest, and deliveries of US mail have been temporarily halted.

With weather events getting more and more extreme, we find ourselves subjected to the forces of Mother Nature on a more frequent basis: the summers are hotter and drier, the winters are colder, the hurricanes and floods are more intense. We barely have time to recover from one weather catastrophe before another one comes our way.

In the moment, there’s not much you can do except take appropriate precautions: Keeps the water running so the pipes don’t freeze, clear the flammable brush that’s close to your house, check on the elderly and infirm.

In the longer-term, however, we should be thinking about how to better prepare for these events. Do we need to change the way we build homes, or where we build them? Can we make adjustments to our lifestyles or our businesses that might help mitigate some of these effects? Are there measures we can take to help employees and customers?

And, for the future, what should we do now to protect our way of life in the future? A hot topic for a very cold day.