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

EESE：绿色化学的公共道德：一种体验式学习方法

• 批准号: 1135364
• 负责人: Alastair Iles
• 金额: $ 29.99万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-10-01 至 2015-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1135364&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EESE; Public; Ethics; Greening; Chemistry

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.

建立一个更具可持续性的化工企业已经成为21世纪美国和世界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一系列的生态和人类健康影响，加上大量的资源和能源使用，大大增加了对生物圈的压力。绿色化学旨在将环境和人类健康问题纳入分子设计。然而，尽管美国在绿色化学方面做了20年的努力，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的化学家、教育家、环境健康科学家、政策制定者、律师和业务经理，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中使用的原则的复杂背景下做出决策。美国目前狭窄的研究生培训使许多学生无法应对化学品使用等复杂问题，更广泛地说，无法应对可持续发展的社会挑战。此外，令人惊讶的是，绿色化学家很少关注绿色化学在技术要求之外引发的广泛的社会伦理问题。为了解决这个问题，项目团队将开发、实施和评估加州大学伯克利分校绿色化学伦理的体验式研究生课程，以及整合到加州大学伯克利分校和加州大学河滨分校其他联合项目中的较小模块。在本课程中，科学、技术、法律、政策、公共卫生和商业专业的研究生将研究和分析绿色化学所面临的伦理挑战。项目团队的主要前提是需要更全面地看待化学物质，而不是简单地从孤立的化学物质、过程或技术的角度来看，而是从整个社会和生态系统的化学物质和产品流动的系统来看。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，并结合了可应用于绿色化学教育的新研究的见解。总之，这些想法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参与的化学实践的整体系统模型；2)以理解社会和技术维度相互影响的方式为基础的公共伦理；3)将学生、教育者和实践者带入道德质疑情境的体验式学习教学法。该项目更广泛的影响包括促进新的伯克利绿色化学中心的持续发展，这是美国第一个将从化学到健康、法律、商业和政策等多个学科整合为一个综合研究和教学活动的努力之一。更广泛地说，该项目将更多地关注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生产系统方面的重要作用。它还将强调道德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。