By Sid Perkins
An old proverb says that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But if you were trapped inside a greenhouse with the temperature building to stifling levels—as some scientists say is happening on Earth—you’d certainly want to break open a window, if you could.
One way to shatter the industrial practices that generate atmospheric greenhouse gases may be to implement the precepts of so-called green chemistry. Its supporters describe this philosophy as pollution prevention at the molecular level. It focuses on developing chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the production and use of substances that are hazardous to people or the environment.