EESE: Public Ethics for Greening Chemistry: An Experiential Learning Approach

建立一个更可持续的化工企业似乎是美国和世界在21世纪面临的主要技术和社会挑战之一。化学品的生产和使用产生了一系列生态和人类健康影响，以及大量资源和能源的使用，极大地增加了生物圈的压力。绿色化学旨在将环境和人类健康问题纳入分子设计。然而，尽管美国20年来不断加大绿色化学的努力，但化学生产系统几乎没有变化。解决绿色化学的社会和伦理问题将需要新一代化学家、教育工作者、环境健康科学家、政策制定者、律师和企业管理人员，他们能够更好地在经济激励、社会行为、治理系统、风险分配和规则起草所使用的原则等复杂背景下做出决定。美国目前狭窄的研究生培训使许多学生没有能力面对这些复杂的化学品使用问题，更广泛地说，是可持续性的社会挑战。此外，绿色化学家们令人惊讶的是，除了技术规定之外，绿色化学引发的广泛的社会伦理问题几乎没有得到关注。为了解决这个问题，项目团队将在加州大学伯克利分校开发、实施和评估绿色化学伦理学的体验式研究生课程，以及更小的模块，用于整合到加州大学伯克利分校和加州大学河滨分校的其他联合项目中。在这门课程中，科学、技术、法律、政策、公共卫生和商业方面的研究生将研究和分析弥漫在绿色化学中的伦理挑战。项目团队的主要前提是，需要更全面地看待化学品，不仅仅是孤立的化学品、工艺或技术，而是整个社会和生态系统中化学品和产品的流动系统。该项目建立在对伦理分析和决策的广泛学术理解的基础上，并纳入了基于可应用于绿色化学教育的较新调查的见解。这些想法共同围绕三个要素构建了一个框架：1)基于追踪化学品生命周期和市场参与者从事的化学实践的整体系统模型；2)基于对社会和技术维度相互塑造方式的理解的公共伦理；以及3)将学生、教育工作者和从业者带入道德质疑情境的体验式学习教学法。该项目的更广泛影响包括为新的伯克利绿色化学中心的持续发展做出贡献，这是美国将从化学到健康、法律、商业和政策等多个学科整合为一项全面的研究和教学活动的首批努力之一。更广泛地说，该项目提请人们更多地注意道德教育和道德在理解法律、市场、商业、政治和社会制度为什么以及如何影响化学品生产系统方面的重要作用。它还将强调伦理选择如何在帮助塑造绿色化学领域的轨迹和创建可供其他教师和大学使用的课程方面发挥作用。

Building a more sustainable chemical enterprise has appeared as one of the major technological and societal challenges that the US and the world faces in the 21st century. Chemical production and use generates a range of ecological and human health impacts, together with significant resource and energy use that contribute greatly to pressures on the biosphere. Green chemistry aims to factor environmental and human health concerns into molecular design. However, despite 20 years of growing green chemistry efforts in the US, there has been little change in the chemical production system. Addressing the social and ethical issues of green chemistry will require a new generation of chemists, educators, environmental health scientists, policy-makers, lawyers, and business managers who are better able to make decisions in the complex context of economic incentives, social behavior, governance systems, the allocation of risks, and principles used in the drafting of rules. The current narrow graduate training in the US leaves many students ill-equipped to face these complex issues of chemicals use, and more broadly, the societal challenge of sustainability. Moreover, green chemists have given surprisingly little attention to the broad, societal ethical issues raised by green chemistry beyond its technical dictates. To address this, the project team will develop, implement and evaluate an experiential graduate course in the Ethics of Green Chemistry at UC Berkeley, along with smaller modules for integration into other allied programs across the UC Berkeley campus and at UC Riverside. In this course, graduate students in science, technology, law, policy, public health, and business will research and analyze the ethical challenges that pervade green chemistry. The project team's major premise is that chemicals need to be seen more holistically, not simply in terms of isolated chemicals, processes, or technologies, but as systems of flows of chemicals and products throughout societies and ecosystems. This project builds on the extensive scholarly understanding of ethical analysis and decision-making and incorporates insights based on newer investigations that can be applied to green chemistry education. Together, these ideas build a framework around three elements: 1) a holistic systems model based on tracing the life cycle of chemicals and chemical practices that market actors engage in; 2) a public ethics grounded in the understanding of the ways in which social and technical dimensions shape each other, and 3) an experiential learning pedagogy that takes students, educators, and practitioners into situations of ethical questioning. The project's broader impact includes contributing to the ongoing development of the new Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, which is one of the nation's first efforts to bring together multiple disciplines from chemistry to health, law, business, and policy into a comprehensive research and teaching activity. More broadly, the project draws greater attention to the important role of ethics education and ethics in understanding why and how legal, market, business, political, and societal systems can affect the chemical production system. It will also highlight how ethical choices might play a role in helping shape the trajectories of the green chemistry field and create curricula that can be used by other instructors and universities.