A Stitch in Time

Cool Tips for a Hot Planet

By Ginny Colling

The International Energy Agency says we have to triple wind, solar and energy storage power by 2030 and double energy efficiency.

A stitch in time saves nine. That saying’s been around since the 1700s. Mend a rip now with one stitch before it grows and needs many more.

Today, we’re in the great climate unravelling. We long ago lost the opportunity for one-stitch fixes. And we’re paying for our procrastination. Southern Ontario was inundated with two one-in-one-hundred year floods this summer. Jasper burned. The insurance industry pegged the cost of July’s flash flood at just under $1 billion. Jasper, at more than $880 million. And those are just insured losses. They don’t include uninsured and government costs.

Or emotional costs. The house of our friends’ son in Jasper burned to ashes. They are one of many families suffering devastating losses.

For years some have argued we can’t afford to take climate action. But we can’t afford not to. It’s already costing us – in higher food prices due to droughts and floods, costs to the health-care system due to extreme heat and pollution, costs to municipalities faced with repairing roads and drainage systems. And of course, costs for home insurance.

New research in the journal, Nature, projects the price tag of environmental damage will be six times higher than the cost of working to limit global heating to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Since last June warming has topped 1.5 degrees.

Costs and destruction will keep accelerating until we stop adding fossil fuels to the fire. To help get us there, the International Energy Agency says we have to triple wind, solar and energy storage power by 2030 and double energy efficiency. At the global climate conference in December, countries around the world agreed. We also need an orderly phase out of oil, gas, coal and natural gas – the main culprits unravelling the climate.

The good news: we’re moving in the right direction. Last year 30 per cent of the world’s power was from clean sources. That number was 45 per cent for Europe. Studies show it’s now much cheaper to build and operate new solar and wind power plants than coal and natural gas.

As individuals, we can reduce climate pollution and save upwards of one third to one half on heating bills by electrifying our homes and buildings, for instance by installing energy efficient heat pumps.

And we can save by driving on electrons instead of gas. Recent analysis by number-cruncher extraordinaire Barry Saxifrage shows that in general, Canadian electric vehicle drivers save the equivalent of a buck a litre when they charge at home.

Friends of mine, former Kawartha Lakes residents, now own a bed and breakfast in New Brunswick. They heat their B&B with heat pumps, have two electric cars and recently installed solar panels. Now they say they’re driving on sunshine.

On a broader scale we can support strong climate policies that shrink pollution, such as:
• an emissions cap for the fossil fuel industry
• clean electricity standards
• ending fossil fuel industry subsidies. Federally that’s about $6 billion a year.
• grants for heat pumps and electric cars

Unfortunately, the wrong-way Ontario government is pumping $238 million into subsidizing Enbridge’s expansion of natural gas – $68 million of that in Bobcaygeon. That could have paid for a cold climate heat pump for all homes Enbridge aims to hook up there. That’s the kind of stitching up we need.

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