When regions are hit repeatedly by storms, he told me, “no matter how wealthy a country is … they never quite make it back to baseline GDP.” Repairing the infrastructure is so expensive that it’s impossible to return to their previous economic baseline. And with each subsequent storm, their GDP is eroded even more. He calls this “sandcastle depreciation,”13 and noted that any civilization, no matter what level it is at, will slowly melt away under this repeated onslaught.
