Molecular Miracle Workers
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Utne Reader July / August 2007
Kevin Krajick OnEarth
Once we retool, can green chemistry make economic sense on its own?
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If you're in business, your interest is to make money, so if somebody came up with a green-chemistry solution that made no economic sense, I'd say, Go back to the drawing board. The idea is to meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously.
Is there a place for green chemistry in the developing world, where people are trying to rapidly advance their economies, often at the expense of the environment?
In the developing world, they're often starting from scratch. So when they build new plants, they can build at the state of the art--and green chemistry is state of the art. In China, they have big new green-chemistry plants making polycarbonate, the clear plastic you see in things like Plexiglas. Here, we're still making it using phosgene, a chemical-warfare agent. In India, the minister of science and technology just decreed that every chemistry student has to take a year of green chemistry. They're looking to grow through innovation.
How did you get started in this field?
Ah! I grew up outside Boston, in Quincy, Massachusetts, on a little hill overlooking the most beautiful wetland you've ever seen. And one day when I was 8 or 9 years old, the bulldozers arrived and filled it with banks and insurance companies. My father was a biology teacher, and he knew how much this upset me. He said, If you really care about something, you should learn about it. I decided to pursue chemistry. It touches everything we see, feel, hear, and touch.
Makes me think of my 6-year-old daughter--I just gave her her first chemistry set. Any advice for her?
Oh, yeah! It's a great time to be a chemist. A friend of mine once asked, tongue in cheek, why there's no green astronomy, no green geology. The answer is serious: Unlike other science, which seeks to understand the world as it is, chemistry introduces new things into the world, and because of that we have the responsibility for the consequences. Science and technology won't be able to achieve sustainability alone. But I don't know of a pathway to sustainability that isn't going to require science and technology.
Reprinted from OnEarth (Spring 2007). Subscriptions: $15/yr. (4 issues), including Natural Resources Defense Council membership, from 40 W. 20th St., New York, NY 10011; www.nrdc.org/onearth.
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