‘A stitch in time saves nine’

The cost of climate inaction

When I first heard the above expression as a kid, it took me a while to figure out what it really meant: it’s often better to spend a little time, effort and even money to deal with a problem right away, rather than letting it fester and get worse to the point where it will take much more time, effort and money to solve.  It applies to far more than clothing repairs; a classic example might be a leaky roof, which, if left too long, becomes a costly major repair.

Another good example is climate change.  We know the cause is mainly emissions from the burning of fossil fuels; and we know the solution is to transition to clean, non-emitting energy sources.  But we’ve been a bit slow to act because of a common perception that it’s too inconvenient or costly.

But a stitch in time saves nine.  Preventing the worst of climate change will definitely take some time, effort and money – but the cost of inaction threatens to be much, much higher.  Consider:

• According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the summer of 2024 was the most destructive in Canadian history for insured losses due to severe weather.  Four events – flooding in southern Ontario, the Jasper wildfire, a major hailstorm in Calgary and flooding in Quebec – resulted in an unprecedented $7 billion in insured losses (which equals $175 per Canadian).  Insurance companies aren’t charities, so they’ll be recovering those losses through higher premiums, which all of us can expect to pay. 
• As climate change worsens, insurance may not just become more expensive; it may become impossible to obtain.  In the cautionary words of Henri de Castries, a former Chairman of AXA Insurance, “a world at +2°C might still be insurable, but a world at 4°C would certainly no longer be insurable” – meaning we’d all be left to face disasters on our own, or be forced to rely on government emergency relief.
• The 2018 New Brunswick flood, one of the worst in our history, caused $75 million in damage (or about $100 per New Brunswicker).
• Climate change threatens to put an enormous burden on our health care system, through reduced air quality, more heat waves, increased mental illness and repairs to infrastructure.  A report by the Canadian Climate Institute estimates the cost of climate-related deaths and lost quality of life as $86 billion per year by 2050 (that’s over $2100 per Canadian), and $250 billion annually by 2100.
• The latest cost estimate for protecting the narrow strip of land connecting New Brunswick and Nova Scotia from rising sea levels is $650 million (or $335 per resident of our two provinces).  
• The homes and livelihoods of 600,000 Canadians and 410 million people living in low-lying areas around the world will be at risk of rising sea levels by 2100.
• A 2024 report commissioned by Consumer Reports magazine concluded that climate change will cost the average American born in 2024 between $500,000 and $1 million over their lifetimes – mainly in lost earnings and climate-related cost of living increases (including higher taxes to pay for disaster relief and infrastructure repairs).

A lot of disasters, a lot of hardship, a lot of cost – in fact, way more than the costs of transitioning to clean energy and preventing climate change in the first place.

So let’s not be deterred by those costs – because when it comes to climate, a stitch in time saves way more than nine!