Reminds me of another saying: Good things come to those who wait. Like fine wine, the World's Best Garlic will not be rushed and while the flavour is as good as ever, more time will fill out the cloves, so it won't be back at the market until next week.
Another example of the importance of timing is how global climate scientists managed to manipulate the weather to cause devastating floods in England, southern Norway and India to coincide exactly with the COP 21 climate change talks in Paris.
It's obvious that climate scientists caused the massive rainfalls in England and India because they dumped the same amount - 341 millimetres - in both locations. This is exactly the type of lazy science we have come to expect from the likes of NASA, NOAA, NIWA, and the IPCC.
At least we can rely on India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his press office for giving it to us straight on the flooding. What most people don't realise is that Modi made a special trip to Whanganui in June to assess the extent of our own flooding (as shown in the accompanying photo).
In the age of Photoshop, many things may not be as they appear ...
But seriously, how's this for timing - the region of Cumbria in the north of England has experienced three record floods in a decade. After the 2009 flooding, residents were told they had experienced a once-in-a-lifetime rain event. Nek minit, Storm Desmond with over a foot of rain in a day, and water levels half a metre higher than the 2005 flood.
By these measures, Whanganui could experience flooding 50 centimetres higher than this year as soon as 2021. Although there is low probability of this happening, it is not out of the realm of possibility.
Cumbria has set a precedent, and even if we stopped burning carbon today there are already decades of extreme weather events loaded into the atmospheric system just waiting for the right time.
England's Environment Secretary Liz Truss said the increasing frequency of extreme rainfall was "consistent with the trends we're seeing in terms of climate change". Throughout Cumbria, 45 million pounds have been spent on flood defences over the past decade - and all over-topped. However, Floods Minister Rory Stewart claims they slowed the water and allowed more time for evacuations. Timing is everything.
Based on most everything coming across the wires on the environment, economy and society, the only constant we can count on is increasing volatility. The best way to respond to volatility is with resilience, and a particular form of eco-design that I call "pre-silience".
A simple way to describe pre-silience is a stitch in time saves nine. All this means is that a timely effort now will prevent more work later. For example, a small hole in a shirt can be repaired with one stitch if caught early, but will require many stitches if allowed to tear and grow larger.
Personally, I don't bother repairing shirts because at the present time they are cheap and abundant from op shops, but I do spend hour upon hour stitching up houses and land. That is to say making both more robust and resilient.
I've always been attracted to old homes and marginalised land, and repairing both is fun and rewarding work.
Unfortunately, the concept of resilience has yet to arrive in our community to any significant extent, but I believe its time will come. It's just discouraging that until then so many unrecoverable resources will be misdirected and monies misspent.
I'm told that "a stitch in time saves nine" is an anagram for "this is meant as incentive". But I'm not so sure.
-Nelson Lebo is an eco design professional specialising in new residential building, renovation, and healthy homes - 022 635 0868; 06 344 5013; theecoschool@gmail.com
