USA: Flood, rebuild, repeat - Are we ready for a Superstorm Sandy every other year?

"Washington is stuck in an endless cycle of disaster response," , as it is treated as "emergency spending", thus, it does not show up in the federal budget, according to The Atlanticcities.com. The US government spends billions of dollars on disasters relief, but less keen on investing in long term disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. And both federal and state policies create incentives for people to build and rebuild in increasingly risky coastal areas. "The large fiscal machinery at the federal level is cranking ahead as if there's no sea level rise, and as if Sandy never happened," says David Conrad, a water consultant who has been working on flood policy for decades. "This issue is moving so much faster than the governmental apparatus right now."

Subsidized insurance is another problem, which encourages people to build—and stay—in high flood-risk areas, since they'll be compensated even if they incur disaster after disaster. It's what economists call a moral hazard, a circumstance that encourages people to engage in risky behavior because the costs are borne by others.

We're already spending billions on responding to storms and disasters made worse by climate change, notes Matthias Ruth, an economist at Northeastern University who focuses on climate impacts; Sandy gave us a chance to think differently. "Why don't we take [that money] and invest in infrastructure in ways to overcome the existing inefficiencies and improve quality of life?" he asks. "And then as we do this, reduce the vulnerability. Instead of having this downward spiral, have an upward one."