The 12 innovations we need to save humanity and the planet

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Which inventions should we prioritise to safeguard the situation and quality wellness and happiness? From amended batteries and photovoltaic overgarment to a cosmopolitan vaccine precursor, Vaclav Smil shares his privation list

Environment 3 January 2023

By Vaclav Smil

I HAVE ne'er been a instrumentality of subject fiction. I americium highly suspicious of immoderate too-good-to-be-true claims astir “epoch-making” discoveries. But I person besides written extensively astir the transformative impacts of inventions, from synthetic ammonia for fertiliser accumulation and semiconductor devices successful electronics to the 5-in-1 vaccine, which immunises against a scope of diseases. What’s more, it seems evident to maine that we request caller cardinal advances similar these to header with the multitude of economic, societal and biology challenges we presently face. I code imaginable advances successful my caller book, Invention and Innovation: A little past of hype and failure.

Identifying the apical priorities for imaginable breakthroughs isn’t easy, not slightest due to the fact that determination is truthful overmuch country for improvement. Consider energy. Bill Gates has noted that: “Half the exertion needed to get to zero emissions either doesn’t beryllium yet oregon is excessively costly for overmuch of the satellite to afford.” You could accidental the aforesaid astir each technological and method category. Moreover, immoderate database of the astir desirable inventions is bound to beryllium subjective. If you spot excavation arsenic alternatively conservative, I plead guilty: determination is nary faster-than-light travel, nary terraforming of different planets.

Instead, my apical 12 innovations, which I acceptable retired here, screen a scope of issues that we urgently request to address. They absorption connected areas that volition person the biggest interaction connected quality well-being and the situation and wherever determination is already cognition to physique on. My privation database adjacent includes 3 changes that each of america tin get to enactment connected close present (see “Bigger and better”).