Theglobal warmingyou can fight rcycling carbon dioxide instead of reducing its emissions, as most of the world political class claim. This is what Ei-ichi Negishi, who has participated in the ConCiencia program held this year in Santiago de Compostela, has proposed the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2010. To do this, as Negishi highlighted in a press conference prior to the conference that he will give today Thursday, it is necessary to find the method so thatcatalysis is economically “profitable”Therefore, although elements such as silver and gold that could be used in the process are known, their high cost makes their use unfeasible.
“How to recycle carbon dioxide is the big problem for us as a species”, despite the fact that in nature, this process occurs constantly, as in photosynthesis, explained the Nobel Prize. Ei-ichi Negishi (Japan, 1935), professor at the American Purdue University (USA), won the Chemistry Award in 2010 for achievingPalladium Catalyzed Cross Couplings in Organic Synthesis, which allowed the establishment of a new, more complex molecular architecture, applicable in fields such as agriculture and medicine.
Negishi points to chemical processes as a key way tocope with the increase in world population, before the 7,000 million people who inhabit the planet today. This, in “competition” – in a combined way – with biological and natural processes, he specified.
The scientist, for his part, has responded to journalists’ questions about why he did not patent his methods, when it generates great benefits for the companies that use it, with a concise “I’d rather be a Nobel Prize than a rich one.” In this regard, he has commented that something he says to his students and grandchildren is that, “if you go after money, money will escape you; but if you go after excellence, money will follow you”, something that, in fact, it has happened to him.
