This week I read two stories that seem to have nothing to do with each other: NOAA officially confirmed El Niño, and across half the world people are blocking highways over the price of gasoline. We treat those as different sections of the newspaper. They’re not. Whenever weather and energy prices collide, the one who pays the bill is almost never the one who caused it.
This Is No Longer a Forecast
On September 10, NOAA confirmed that El Niño has already strengthened, with more than 90% probability of reaching “very strong” intensity this fall-winter, and a 75% probability that between October and December it will surpass every El Niño event on record since 1950. Colombia’s IDEAM confirmed it for the country too: 63% probability of “very strong” category, with the most critical window between November and January, hitting the Pacific, Andean and Caribbean regions hardest. Grid operator XM has already warned that reservoirs could fall to 19.3% of capacity, and the Hidroituango dam — 12% of the country’s power supply — requested permission to hold more water ahead of what its own study calls a “perfect storm” of seven simultaneous factors. This is no longer an early warning. It’s a countdown with a date on it.
The Government That Can’t Afford to Improvise
Colombia enters this window with Abelardo de la Espriella barely a month and a half into office — he was sworn in on August 7 after beating the Pacto Histórico candidate by roughly 250,000 votes — and with a mobilized opposition: not a single Pacto Histórico lawmaker attended the inauguration, and the party marched in several cities instead. This same week, opposition leader Iván Cepeda trended again for calling new strikes alongside teachers’ unions. The new government also inherited a Fuel Price Stabilization Fund that could close the year with a deficit of up to $14 trillion pesos, with the diesel subsidy — the fuel that moves the country’s freight — now exceeding $5,000 pesos per gallon. It froze gasoline and diesel prices in September to ease the burden on households after August’s earthquake — understandable, but not free: every month the adjustment is postponed, the hole gets bigger, right as El Niño is about to spike energy demand.
What Nobody’s Telling You: We’re Not the Odd Case Out
This exact dilemma — subsidize fuel or let it rise — is blowing up governments across half the planet right now. In Kenya, four people died, 30 were injured and more than 700 were arrested before President Ruto backed down and cut diesel prices. In Portugal there were horn-honking protests and marches, with diesel hitting a record high of roughly €2.4 per liter, while fishermen in southern France blockaded fuel depots. The trigger is the same everywhere: the U.S.-Iran war pushed oil above $100 a barrel, and every government that had been using subsidies as a political cushion is running out of room. Colombia isn’t facing an exotic problem. It’s facing the same tension that already burned through the street’s patience in Nairobi, Lisbon and Marseille — it just hasn’t been our turn yet.
The Decision That Actually Depends on Us
Here’s where I apply what I’ve been repeating for years: reason from fundamentals, not fear, and decide before it’s forced on you. Freezing prices indefinitely isn’t energy policy — it’s postponing a bill with interest. What I’d propose to the new government — knowing it’s politically uncomfortable with an opposition already in the streets — is a gradual, pre-announced adjustment mechanism for diesel, tied to a public formula, instead of months of freezing followed by a sudden shock once there’s no fiscal room left. That’s what separates a country from ending up like Kenya: not avoiding the adjustment, but making it predictable. And if you manage treasury for a transport, agribusiness or logistics company, the practical lesson is simple: don’t build your 2027 cash flow assuming frozen diesel prices. El Niño is about to push energy demand up right when the fuel fund has the least room left to keep subsidizing — and half the world has already shown us how that ends when it’s postponed too long.
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