Chemistry

One important factor in today's quest for a solution to climate change will be new ideas from the chemical industry and university departments. We can't just turn the clock back to times when we didn't produce so much carbon dioxide. Society has moved on and developed and we need to find new ways of doing things.

An example of what this might mean has just been presented to the American Chemical Society's 235th Annual Meeting. German chemist, Thomas Muller, has proposed a method by which the carbon dioxide, which is so plentifully available in the smokestacks of industries that burn fossil fuels, can be converted into a polymer known as polycarbonate.

Polycarbonate is a hard tough material used for applications such as CDs and DVDs, lenses for spectacles, drinks bottles and car headlight casings. To be able to use carbon dioxide to make these products and so avoid releasiong it into the atmosphere can only be a good thing.