20-Year Prospect
Help us, Chemical Engineer Kenobi. You're our only hope.
No one but you has the training, intellectual will, and research funding to show us how to use "biorenewable carbon feedstocks" (whatever those are) instead of nasty petroleum as a base for the chemicals we depend on in our everyday lives.
No one but you knows how to turn carbon dioxide into methanol, which apparently is way better than gasoline for fueling cars...although if that's true, why is our Ford F-150 still eating $150.00 worth of gas at the pump every week?
You also have a gift for coming up with chemicals like methyl isocynate gas. We don't know what methyl isocynate gas is used for, but apparently it's really handy at killing thousands of people in India. So...maybe you could figure out how to make it nonlethal, thus making the world a safer place.
You, oh Chemical Engineer Kenobi, with your many talents, can expect to be employed twenty years from now as change propels us to manufacture many new, different, and colorful chemicals. You have the high ground.