2015 hottest year, by a mile

Sadly, 2015 was really hot. Record hot. And it set a record for breaking the record (set last year in 2014).
Ouch, ouch and double ouch!.
This was a wicked El Nino year. Only an El Nino year last century competes with the hottest 14 years this century. Apparently, the follow through from El Nino starting in 2015 should leave 2016 as a rather hot year.
One of the best summations on the subject came from NPR. Or Global Warming in Wikipedia, where you will find the best, most current, information on sustainability in the world.
Starting in 2014, we had half of the months as record hottest months. 2015 had most of the months being the hottest on record; 10 months in 2015 matched or exceeded all time recorded history records! (Ask when we last had a record COLD year, or even a record COLD month, and you will get goose bumps!)
Fortunately -- finally -- most of the people in the US are finally coming around to the fact the we do, in fact, have global warming. See blog here.
As CO2 blasted past 400 ppm in 2015, we have only just begun this journey into uncharted territory. And, CO2 can be expected to persist in the atmosphere for about 100 years.
It took the earth 50 to 500 million years to store up the coal and oil we seem determined to burn up in about 2 centuries. And in the process we are releasing mass quantities of carbon into earth's ecosystem that has been happily sequestered, like diamonds in the rough, for 100 million years or more.
We at SustainZine, propose actions that we all could take immediately. Within a day or so, we all could have taken energy efficiency actions on our homes, businesses and churches. Wa-la... Save energy, save money, save the environment (a little for each of us). A perpetuity of savings.
Telecommuting/telework is a wonderful place to start with businesses. Huge savings of energy, time and life. A perpetuity of savings if the non-drive to work, continues to work.
And there are many things like this that we can do without the "help" of government.
Education, likewise, is critical for us all to start making more informed decisions. There are easy things that we all should be doing, right here, right now. We also need to be continually aware of the BIG factors, so that they are in the forefront of our future decisions and actions.
Business as usual is something we need to continually question. That's what got us into this situation. Unconscious decisions are still decisions.
A business without a sustainability plan, does not really have a business plan.
2016 seems like a year when sustainability will start to gain firm footing in the US. Each of us can start by save a watt and save a gallon.

FDA miss, more or less!

Uncle Sam Just Told Us To Drink Water, Not Soda. You Might've Missed It http://n.pr/1TI2QUx

The guidelines, and the pictures, should be, and could be, very simple.
More... fresh fruits and vegetables. More water. More exercise.
Less... Processed foods, red meat, and sugary soft drinks.
Simple. And fits nicely into almost any diagram you want to make.

Manatees, and turtles, back from the extinction vortex

Finally, Some Good News For Manatees And Green Sea Turtles http://n.pr/1UCUr4V