Day 680: Hot Hot Heat

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/16/world/earth-hottest-year/index.html

(CNN) - 2014 was the Earth's warmest year on record, a U.S. weather agency announced Friday, with average temperatures 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit above the previous high.

The National Climatic Data Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, noted the average temperatures over land and oceans were higher in 2014 than any year since 1880 when record-keeping began.

Every person I speak to talks about how "crazy" the weather has been recently - whether they are here in South Africa, USA or Europe. In the area I live the temperature can jump 20 degrees Celsius in a matter of a few hours. Storms have gotten more severe - a few weeks ago lightning struck 2 different buildings within 30 meters of each other as well as a tree 100 meters away in one direction and a carport 100 meters in the other direction - this was all during the same storm but different lightning strikes. A couple weeks before that there was a hailstorm with hail the size of golf balls - the biggest yet in the almost 7 years I've lived here. Last winter we had frost so severe that even the hardiest of African plants like aloes were affected. These extreme events were not isolated, the unusual weather around them simply wasn't as extreme. 

Maybe the nature of nature and the weather is devolving and becoming unstable at the same rate as the minds of people are devolving and destabilizing. The extremeness of our actions in destroying the planet is simply being mirrored back to us in the extremeness of nature. 

This is not a new thing - there's been a lot of talk about protecting the environment and it's been going on for decades. There have been countless summits and conventions and events - most of them have had little to no impact. The one point that is always standing in the way of protecting the planet and ensuring the continued survival of the human race is that we see making money to be more valuable. If we were really serious about making a difference to the state of the world many more changes would have been implemented without the impediment of "the economy" (which is just an imaginary entity humanity created anyway). 

Our actions in this regard reflect what we truly regard to be important. We will give our time, skills and attention to that which we see as having a high priority - whether it is personal or otherwise. Look at the world: What priorities do you see we have? Where are we focusing our time, skills and resources? What parts of life do we give more of ourselves to? While everyone is different in what they see as being important, there is a general trend that you will be able to identify if you look at the bigger picture and it centers around ME. There are some places and areas where this is changing, more people are starting to see the bigger picture and want to change, but not many have taken that realisation to the next step of actually doing something to create change. 

We are at the precipice of change, the tipping point. The state of the planet has degraded to the extent that this may very well be the point of no return - the same could be said about the state of humanity. This is the moment we decide: Will we change and create heaven on earth, or will we continue to seek only to fulfill our own desires and goals at the expense of life.