My Life on this planet.

New international rules are signed to prevent that countries dump their waste in other countries , unless those countries agree . These rules will force countries to produce less waste and to develop better recyclable products or to develop methods to be able to recycle difficult recyclable products. Good. Exporting (plastic) waste from developed to developing countries will become more difficult as developing countries now have to agree to accept waste. China  already refused to accept more foreign waste, now also Malaysia will refuse more foreign waste and even intends to send back the waste we already dumped there. Indeed, ones countries develop beyond a certain level they refuse waste from others and instead may even start to export their own waste. And the hypocrisy of certain Western countries: we condemn other often much less developed countries when they dump or burn waste but when recyclables can no longer be exported to poor countries we destroy much of our own recyc...

Waste, often dangerous, from many rich and thus developed parts of the world, is dumped in Africa and other places. A few years ago there was a major scandal in Belgium when dioxins where found in chicken (eggs), leading to another government after the election. Now, people in Ghana are eating also dangerous eggs that contain the same toxins because the developed world dumps their electronic waste in that country. It was to be expected that this practice whereby developed countries dumb their (dangerous) waste in other still developing countries can no longer continue. For instance, the Philippine  President Duterte is warning Canada to retake its waste that it exported to   the Philippines or face its anger. I think we should not take this light. And he's right, as a president, he should protect his own people. Undeveloped countries are developing and no longer accept waste from others so their own people become ill, just as people in developed countries don't accept ...

Humanity ‘at a crossroads’ as damage to planet poses growing risk to health, UN environment agency warns https://news.un.org/feed/view/en/story/2019/03/1034611 People call the youngsters who demand action against climate change but also against destruction of the environment stupid. Still, here another UN report that promises that, when humans don't change their behaviour, our health will be at risk. Therefore, as I continue to say: we need a cleaner industry. There is nothing against some CO2 production as this is needed to balance the O2 levels (and thus bio energy production such as burning wood should be possible) but more fossil fuel levels of CO2 harm us (now) while also the levels of plastics and other products in the environment harm, including our fertility (although fewer children may not be a bad thing) and that of animals and maybe even plants. Therefore, new and cleaner production of products is needed

Recently, we reached the symbolic and scientific important value of 400 ppm CO2 (carbon dioxide, see Fig. 1) in the atmosphere (ppm = parts per million). Although it is a very low concentration, the CO2 levels haven't been as high as today over the past few million years and we know how differently the world looked in those days. This value will temporarily go down again as trees will absorb some of it now that they get leaves (= science). It will be interesting to see whether scientists are right when they warn for this concentration. But maybe science will join religion because religious people say that gods will become angry. Both scientists and holy books predict there may come a time when there will be droughts and flooding, when people will have to move to other regions to survive with increasing tensions in society over space, food and water that may result in wars and diseases. Both scientists and gods are angry because people don't want to change their behaviour. Scie...

The Chinese capital Beijing is at present covered with smog and people need mouth pieces and air purifiers. But not only China has problems, also many other cities all over the world, although there are places were air quality improves. Here a comparison between London in the past and Beijing now and it seems to show our impossibility to learn from the past to prevent disasters. Past: London It is unbelievable: in China the pollution is about as bad as it was in 1952 in London when that air pollution, known as the Great Smog , killed about 4,000 people within a month, mostly young and old people while 100,000 people became ill due to respiratory problems , resulting as some researchers say in a total of about 12,000 fatalities. This was due to a rare weather event (creating windless conditions) but this weather event only made clear what was known for many years but ignored, and that was the large amount of air pollution. First one believed it was one of many smog events (so n...