America’s new growth engine runs on disaster.
Bloomberg Intelligence calls it the ‘Disaster Industrial Complex’.
An ecosystem of firms profiting from climate disruption: The Home Depot , Lowe’s Companies, Inc. , Tetra Tech , Duke Energy Corporation, debris contractors, equipment suppliers and engineering groups.
Since 2000, the US has spent $7.7 trillion on recovery and rebuilding -a whopping 36 percent of all GDP growth in that time. Last year alone neared $1 trillion, roughly 3 percent of the entire economy.
Bloomberg’s Prepare and Repair Index- tracking 100 disaster-linked firms - has outperformed the S&P 500 by 6.5 percent annually for a decade. Analysts such as JPMorganChase’s climate advisory team now model disaster spending as a predictable feature of economic growth.
After Hurricane Helene, three million cubic yards of debris were cleared from a single county. Each truckload counted as GDP. Each contract became revenue.
What was once an external cost has become part of the business cycle. Disasters now drive steady work, steady spend and steady growth.
We’re not just adapting to climate change. We’re building an economy around it.
