Positioning Nanotechnology to Address Climate Change
One of society's most pressing challenges in the 21st century is that of climate change. In fact, climate change is seen as the most defining issue of our time as we are witness to an anthropogenic perturbation in geology and earth sciences of global scale. To move forward in this new era, solutions will be sought to both mitigate the effects of climate change (e.g., reducegreenhouse gases) as well as adaptation and resilience-building (e.g., improve infrastructure and agriculture to resist damage from extreme weather or floods). The immediacy of the needed solutions dictates that the response must use the full force of society's current knowledge base, science, technology, and innovation. Nanotechnology is an enabling technology that hasmatured over the past few decades and, now considered for general-purpose and mass use, is ideal for addressing climate change and its impacts. To position nanotechnology to address such complex challenges, this Perspective integrates collective insights from a broad range of viewpoints and presents recommendations into how research can be motivated and scoped,organized, and implemented to achieve beneficial outcomes and innovations in the most efficient ways. Five characteristics of future research that can effectively advance nanotechnology solutions are presented and touch upon aspects of use-inspired basic research (Pasteur's quadrant), systems-level thinking, convergence research, stakeholders, and nanotechnology infrastructure. By building consensus around this compelling and complex research topic, this Perspective aims to direct, inform, and accelerate needed actions in the research community to advance nanotechnology solutions for addressing climate change.