Someone with more examples and a greater understanding, not to mention eloquence, than I ought to come out with a book going over, in tremendous detail, how much of our chemical engineering "miracles of science!" were created to replace mechanical processes or reduce power requirements. Polish regularly? No, we will just manufacture a coating! Filtering? No, flocculating agents! More insulation on that refrigerator? No, here's this new refrigerant! Sugar cane makes the vats hard to clean ... but high fructose corn syrup, that's the ticket. And that while a non-trivial portion of these chemical replacements are effective at what they do, we just have not considered the escape of these miracles into air, water, and soil. It just wasn't on anyone's horizon.
While I love science as much as anyone else does, I am wondering if a distant human future civilization (assuming we have one), will have switched to a "this new molecule is by default dangerous until proven otherwise, over decades." Chemical engineering would grind to a halt, but might perhaps be replaced by ever-finer mechanical processes for similar results.
While I love science as much as anyone else does, I am wondering if a distant human future civilization (assuming we have one), will have switched to a "this new molecule is by default dangerous until proven otherwise, over decades." Chemical engineering would grind to a halt, but might perhaps be replaced by ever-finer mechanical processes for similar results.