Leadership Quote by Jay Weatherill

Weatherill’s line is less a poetic warning than a political weapon: it reframes climate change from an abstract, polarizing morality play into a simple budget reality. “One thing we do know” is doing heavy lifting. It narrows the argument to a single, defensible claim and quietly sidesteps the familiar trench warfare over models, temperatures, and “uncertainty.” The pitch is pragmatic: even if you want to argue about the science, you still can’t argue with compounding costs.

The phrase “cost of adjustment” is a careful choice. It avoids the language opponents love to caricature - “sacrifice,” “restrictions,” “lifestyle changes” - and substitutes a managerial term that sounds like infrastructure planning, not ideological reeducation. Adjustment also implies inevitability. The question is not whether we’ll pay, but whether we’ll pay now (in orderly, planned increments) or later (in panicked, expensive triage).

Subtextually, this is a rebuke to delay tactics dressed up as caution. Weatherill is calling out a specific kind of political procrastination: the habit of demanding perfect certainty before taking action, while quietly accumulating risk. The line borrows the logic of insurance and public works: you don’t wait for the bridge to collapse to fund maintenance.

Context matters because a politician isn’t speaking into a seminar; he’s speaking into a cycle of budgets, elections, and media outrage. The quote is designed to make inaction look fiscally reckless, not just environmentally negligent - a strategic pivot aimed at persuading the movable middle and embarrassing the “wait and see” crowd.