Awareness and responsibility are two faces of the same coin, which makes them vulnerable. We are living in a society in which we are responsible for our own action, and in fact, we are well aware of it. As a matter of fact, we don’t want to cross the line awareness and turn this into our responsibility. We have to understand this fact to make our society and environment better for our future generation.
Today our world faces a growing number of problems and climate change is at the forefront of this list. Researchers around the world have dedicated themselves to combat climate change. Recently the scientific community took a big leap forwards when a group of researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research developed black Nanogold particles that can convert CO2 to methane (fuel)1. As we all know, CO2 is one of the main contributor to global warming and there have been efforts around the world to reduce its amount in the atmosphere in order to curb the harmful impact of global warming on us. This recent development showcases the power possessed by the field of synthetic chemistry in solving problems and reshaping our lives for the better.
This story of success is just one of many, but at this moment in time, we need more stories like this to provide motivation moving forward. It is time we understand our responsibilities towards the planet and work together as a community and utilize our scientific progress to undo the wrongs that we have done as a species. I am sharing because it’s the right time to share when everyone is suffering from high temperature due to global warming.
Prabhat Ranjan, KU Leuven
Sources:
- Plasmonic colloidosomes of black gold for solar energy harvesting and hotspots directed catalysis for CO2to fuel conversion: Sci., 2019, 10, 6594-6603.
