Federal forecasters put the odds of a strong El Niño this winter at roughly two in three, and the odds of one matching or exceeding the record 2015 event at better than one in three. That forecast is worth taking seriously. But the bigger story is that resilience infrastructure has quietly become a distinct investment category — and capital markets have been slow to treat it that way. A strong El Niño will make ignoring that gap even more expensive.
I served as mayor of Hoboken for eight years. The lesson I took from that job: the financial case for resilience is almost always stronger than people assume. When a city manages physical risk well, it protects property values, the tax base, business continuity, and credit quality at the same time. When it does not, all four take a hit at once.
