The Power of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.

[NNadir]

I don't know why anyone else is a Democrat, but I know why I'm a Democrat, and it very much involves one of Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms," specifically the "freedom from want."

I regard human poverty as a driver of many the other intractable problems the world faces, but given that we are undergoing an environmental collapse on a global scale, addressing poverty is impossible without also addressing sustainability should be a nonstarter, since doing otherwise will simply shift the burden of poverty on to future generations.

This is a scientific and engineering challenge, an extreme challenge, but one that can be met.

I recognize that there is a very real poverty problem in the US, but to me, poverty beyond our borders is extremely exigent as well.

I personally believe that sustainability and meeting human development goals, the latter an activity that the UN has been organizing for quite some time, but I do think that everyone must think anew to do so, not just people on the right, but we on the left must also think anew.

I thus read with interest an editorial in the most recent issue of one of the scientific journals I regularly scan and read, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

The editorial is here, and may be open sourced: The Power of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering Research

An excerpt:

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) unveiled an ambitious plan, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aimed at providing guidelines, applicable universally to all nations, for equitable and responsible development, respectful of humans and ecosystems.(1) The SDGs plan sets a clear agenda to be achieved by 2030 (Agenda 2030), composed of 17 goals and 169 targets, that promotes economic growth, environmental protection, social inclusion, and human well-being.(2) This framework has been adopted by many governmental agencies, foundations, and companies in order to articulate specific actions in the broader context of sustainable development.(3,4) The global scientific community has also established connections to the SDGs, highlighting the central role that sustainable chemistry and engineering must play to realize them.(5,6) In particular, the SDGs are a powerful way to focus on how chemicals are used.(7) The central role and impact of advanced technologies on global well-being and sustainability are further recognized by the declaration of a United Nations International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development in 2022.(8)

The graphic from the paper:



I note, with hope, that three of the papers in the magnificent previous issue of this journal touched on the resource most critical to meeting these goals, uranium chemistry, and a third, on the recovery of elements from seawater, touched on it as well. A fourth certainly evokes, certainly for me, if not others, thinking about uranium chemistry, since it makes clear that a putative "cure" can be worse than the disease. It's this paper: Avoiding Regrettable Substitutions: Green Toxicology for Sustainable Chemistry (Alexandra Maertens, Emily Golden, and Thomas Hartung
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2021 9 (23), 7749-7758)

We are making a big mistake if do anything other than "going nuclear" against climate change, climate change being, in part, a function of poverty in ways that I personally can see clearly.

[Moostache]

1. Three thoughts popped into my head reading that...

1) Wow...speeches from FDR compared to those of the recently fired Orange clown are soooooooo different in tone, gravitas and impact...not even playing the same sport.

2) Why is "Climate Action" 13th on the graphic, when if nothing is done it will make the other 12 completely unattainable?

I just think its odd to have the graphic list Climate Action 13th AND the article to auspiciously feature the following:

This approach provides a framework to guide and trigger advances in sustainable chemistry and engineering, in a way similar to the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry and the 12 Principles of Green Engineering.

Almost like a subliminal advertising ploy in movies or TV...12...12....12...13th item on a graphic. things that make me go "hmmmm?"

3) we have about 40% of Americans who are actually insane at the moment, they doubt real science in favor of hoaxes and misleading charlatans; they honestly believe the world is controlled by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping, Child-kidnapping murderers.

That is a whole lot of crazy and no time at all to change course. Homo sapiens is set for self-inflicted suicide extinction and sadly, we'll be taking a whole lot of other lifeforms with us into the dustbin of history. At least the dinosaurs had no chance and were the victims of chance - creatures being wiped out by man are being killed off for greed, stupidity and lack of human empathy.

[NNadir]

2. I'm not entirely sure that the order suggested by the graphic design artist reflects...

...any kind of priorities.

On the contrary, I see most of the items in the graphics are interlinked in no particular order.

Human poverty, for example, plays a significant role in climate change than many people realize, mostly in the area of land use changes, which account for about 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. Land use changes are certainly involved in issue 14 and 15 and for that matter in number 6.

If I were asked to "order" these priorities, I might place - most likely place - climate change at the top, but frankly, without the graphic artist's "priorities" - if they are in fact priorities - #4, #6, #14, and #15, it will be impossible to address climate change.

The importance of #4 reflects the scale of the engineering challenge that climate change represents. The thermodynamics of carbon dioxide reduction (chemical reduction) means that we need to invest all the energy that was released by combusting carbon sources, largely fossil fuels but also "renewable" biomass, in the first place. This basically means almost all of the energy released by combustion going back to the mid 19th century, when the combustion of coal on an industrial scale started.

And, no, a reactionary program of trying to provide world energy supplies while meeting human development goals, will not succeed by relying on so called "renewable energy." There is a reason that humanity chose to abandon a lifestyle based on "renewable energy" beginning in the mid 19th century. That reason was that even more so than today, the majority of the world's citizens lived short miserable lives of dire poverty.

One driver of climate change is population growth, and it is observationally clear that countries with the lowest birth rates are precisely those where citizens live in safe, secure, healthy communities. It is likely that people will have more children if the probability that children will survive to adulthood is low and this is clearly a reason why that population growth tends to be the highest in countries with a large impoverished population.