When it comes to getting from here to there, chemistry is essential, whether it be a trip to the local store to buy groceries or a shot into space to explore the universe. Cars, for example, are truly chemistry in motion. Today's automobile relies heavily upon chemical industry innovations to enhance performance, to provide safety for its occupants, and to deliver fuel efficiency. On average, each car contains nearly $2,000 dollars worth of chemical processing and products. These items range from its scratch-resistant paint job, to its often lightweight plastic-molded frame, to its shatter-resistant polyvinyl butyral layered windshield, to its soft polyurethane seat cushions, to its neoprene hoses, break fluids, sealants, adhesives and coolants, to its chemically powered airbags, to its styrene-butadiene tires with added stabilizers and antioxidants. Chemistry really keeps America moving!

Chemistry also is addressing the environmental issues facing today's automobile industry. For example, the replacement of steel with high-strength engineered plastics has enabled cars to become lighter, which boosts fuel efficiency and reduces emissions without sacrificing safety. Nevertheless, more needs to be done, as I will try to explain. Each gallon of gasoline, which weighs 6.3 lbs, produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide when burned. The extra weight comes, of course, from the oxygen that combines with the carbon in the fuel to make carbon dioxide. In the United States, something like 400 million gallons (1.51 billion liters) of gasoline gets consumed every day. That figure translates to about 146 billion gallons (about 550 billion liters) of gasoline per year, which yields the annual release of about 290 billion pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is no wonder then to find that more than two-thirds of U.S. oil consumption is used for transportation, which accounts for about one-third of all U.S. CO2 emissions. This talk will emphasize the challenge of cutting carbon dioxide emissions to reduce the risk of incurring severe global climate change.

Chemistry is very much on the human scale, and from that derives its great interest and its problems. In this generously illustrated lecture several views of chemistry will be presented, stressing its psychological dimension and its tie to the arts: First of all, chemistry is, as it has always been, the art, craft, business of substances and their transformations. It is now also the science of microscopic molecules, both simple and complex. And then there are people's perceptions of chemistry - alternating between seeing the healing and the hurting aspects of this anthropic science. The underlying psychological tensions will be explored, as will the strong ties of chemistry and the arts.