ENR’s Oil-Spill Editorial Is ‘An Assault’
Your editorial (“The Gulf Oil-Spill Disaster Is Engineering’s Shame,”) is an insult and assault on the engineering profession. ENR should retract the editorial because it misplaces responsibility, cites an honorable profession as something far less than deserved, makes an outlandish connection between disasters such as Three Mile Island, the Challenger, Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil Spill and the engineering profession as a whole. It also indicts a profession with only a slight mention of what the engineering profession has contributed to the world’s society. Your lame point that somehow “engineers have to help each other protect against corporate power and technological overreaching” does not mention all the other professions involved in each decision that led to the disasters you have singled out. What is their responsibility?
It is a fact that you cannot turn in any direction or look at any other profession without seeing the benefits that engineers have contributed to society. The technological world we need to survive on this planet only exists through the contributions of engineers. As a magazine for engineers, you have failed your customers and owe them an apology.