Geoethics across the Geoscience Curriculum

Practicing geoscience professionals, geoscience researchers, and any informed citizen should be aware of the ethical implications of their actions and intentionally counteract possible negative consequences. This mindset should become more prevalant despite current events. I am convinced that we, the geoscience community, can attract more students into geoscience if they see the ethical dimension of our field. I therefore advocate that instructors of geoscience courses discuss ethics with their students and not leave the teaching of ethical thinking just to dedicated courses that are often taught by philosophers. I posit that students need both a theoretical foundation of ethics, as well as role models that show that we care about ethics and how we address ethical questions in our work, to be able to make informed decisions later. Instructors in any geoscience course can encourage students to think through scenarios, including case studies and wicked problems. Examples range from more general (eg, representation of data, lab group dynamics, credits and authorship, possible conflict of interest) over field-work related and Indigenous questions (eg, inclusiveness, property owners' right to know, land rights, Indigenous knowledge) to politial issues with a geoscience component (eg, ethical mining, including in the deep ocean and space, nuclear waste disposal, green energy, disaster mitigation, cross-border water and resource questions) that can be integrated in overview as well as specialised geoscience courses. By making our students aware of the intersection between geoscience and ethics they will be better prepared to launch a fulfilling career.