Over the billions of years since Earth came into being, the climate has worn many faces: long periods of sweltering heat and ice ages. Even after humans appeared, that rhythm remained recognizable for a long time: slow rises, slow falls, a world breathing on a scale larger than our own lives. But now that breathing has sped up into a panting sprint. Warming is happening fast and feels less and less like a natural fluctuation and more like a derailment driven by us. And here, as a chemist, I have to be honest: we have played a leading role in this—and we still do.

We made the synthesis of ammonia possible, turning food production into an industrial certainty. The world’s population was able to grow to more than twice what once seemed sustainable. On average, about half of the nitrogen atoms in our bodies come from a chemical factory. And it didn’t stop there. 

Thanks to medicines and vitamins, we are not only more numerous, but we also live, on average, decades longer. Chemistry has also delivered ever better materials, and that combination has pushed our prosperity upward: larger homes, heavier cars, more flying, more consumption. The dominant role of chemistry is everywhere: from bread to pill, from plastic to planet.

Uncontrolled global warming is linked to those many billions of people who, in part due to chemical triumphs, live longer and more luxurious lives. No one is seriously proposing to halve the world’s population or impose a maximum lifespan. So only one direction remains: living more modestly. Fortunately, that does not mean going back to the start of the previous century. Once again, it is chemists who are helping to make the transition possible.

Thanks to advances in catalysis, processes are cleaner than ever. We are developing less toxic alternatives, new materials make large-scale solar cells and batteries feasible, plastic recycling is improving, and food keeps longer. And as a recent highlight: the Nobel Prize for Omar Yaghi, who uses his metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to capture CO₂ from the air. 

And yet, chemistry cannot do it alone. Every breakthrough that improves our lives is collectively answered with even more use and growth, leaving us constantly one step behind.

So chemistry is indispensable, but not all-powerful. It can make it possible for us to live differently and better; it cannot do it for us. The future calls for two movements at the same time: better chemistry and less automatic growth. Only when we dare to pursue both together will progress regain the meaning it ought to have: not more, but better.

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This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor