I want to invent things to save the world but I worry about destroying the world by accident.
Take, for example, Thomas Midgley Jr.
He, while working for GM, discovered that lead additives to gasoline would stop engines from knocking. We know now that lead poisoning is terrible and, even though Midgley had to take time off to recover from lead poisoning, he still held a press conference where he inhaled the fumes from tetraethyl lead (the additive) for 60 seconds to convince the world that his additive was safe. Of course it wasn't and eventually banned. Midgley apparently privately admitted that lead was bad in his later years and worked to make amends for introducing it.
His amending took the form of developing a non-toxic and non-explosive gas to be used in the place of dangerous gases that used to fill refrigerators and heat pumps. His extremely successful invention? CFCs.
Midgley is said by some to have "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth history."
I hope I am not a Midgley.
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