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.
Category: teleworking
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2015 hottest year, by a mile
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A Car Costs a Lot More Than You Think – WSJ.com
Mercedes or Ford, a Car Costs a Lot More Than You Think – WSJ.com:
Here’s the breakdown of a car expenses is about $9,000 per year: Pretty Car Chart illustration
- 39% is depreciation
- 35% is associated with the miles driven: fuel, oil, tires, etc.
That’s 3/4 of the cost of a car, if you are only driving 15,000 per year.Insurance, finance charges and tag/taxes are about 10% each.Time is not included here, but it should be if commuting is the reason for all of the 15,000 miles traveled.A car may cost a lot more than you think, but it also cost a LOT more than WSJ thinks it costs.
TELECOMMUTING
We know that the full cost (savings really) of someone telecommuting is more like $30,000 per year. That’s the company (some $23k savings/year), to the individual and to the community (more roads). That’s before introducing the concept of cost of an employee’s (leisure) time.
* SustainZine blogs on Telecommuting
* SustainZine blogs on Workshift
* Transportation Humor, kinda.
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Why Won't Yahoo! Let Employees Work From Home? – Businessweek
Why Won’t Yahoo! Let Employees Work From Home? – Businessweek:
Boy Mayer is gonna cause a lot of shake here with the everyone-has-to-travel-to-work policy.
Apparently (Today Show) she now as a nursery set up next door to her office for her new convenience. That helps new parents, maybe, but not the ones with kids in school or those people who live a longer way from the office.
But Mayer is shaking it up.
There has long been the debate about the down side of work-at-home (WAH). And a tech leader like Yahoo might just be a place to face-to-face interaction that is lost from WAH.
But, I fear that making everyone drive to work is a major setback to telecommuting efforts that are so very beneficial to the efforts of sustainability.
Studies show that the true costs of telecommuting are far closer to $40,000 per year than to the $5,000 cost of gas. Most of that savings goes to the employer. Closer to $45,000 if you want to include the less-tangible costs of externalities such as infrastructure and greenhouse gases (GHGs).
Key words: WAH, telecommuting. Work-at-home, sustainability, carbon footprint, GHG, teleworking, remote working, time shifting.
First posted at www.SustainZine.com. Repeated here.
‘via Blog this’ -
Why Won’t Yahoo! Let Employees Work From Home? – Businessweek
Why Won’t Yahoo! Let Employees Work From Home? – Businessweek:
Oh boy, Mayer is gonna cause a lot of shake up here with her everyone-has-to-travel-to-work policy.
Apparently (Today Show) she now as a nursery set up next door to her office for her new convenience. That helps new parents, maybe, but not the ones with kids in school or those people who live a longer way from the office.
But Mayer is shaking it up.
There has long been the debate about the down side of work-at-home (WAH). And a tech leader like Yahoo might just be a place to face-to-face interaction that is lost from WAH.
But, I fear that making everyone drive to work is a major setback to telecommuting efforts that are so very beneficial to the efforts of sustainability.
Studies show that the true costs of telecommuting are far closer to $40,000 per year than to the $5,000 cost of gas. Most of that savings goes to the employer. Closer to $45,000 if you want to include the less-tangible costs of externalities such as infrastructure and greenhouse gases (GHGs).