As I prepared to teach my
course, Technological Catastrophes, in the Summer II session, I was faced with
an all too familiar problem – how to incorporate in the course the latest such
catastrophe, in this case the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico. (I usually tell
my students that a catastrophe is bound to occur during the course, most likely
a commercial plane crash.)
The course, which I have
taught for more than twenty years, is designed to approach the topic of
technological catastrophes through integration of perspectives drawn from
engineering, the natural and social sciences, and the humanities. The course seeks to develop an understanding
of the underlying causes and impacts of technological catastrophes through
synthesis of four major case studies-the Challenger space shuttle, Chernobyl
nuclear plant, Bhopal chemical plant, and Exxon Valdez oil tanker-as well as a
number of other cases.
Lectures and discussions
focus on the human, organizational, technical and external environmental
factors underlying the causes and impacts of technological catastrophes with
significant emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to risk assessment and
risk management. Human factors, often mistakenly regarded as the sole cause of
technological accidents, generally entail some form of operator error or lack
of proper training for the operators, as in the case of Chernobyl when the
operators shut down virtually all of the plant’s safety systems during an
on-line test, or when the intoxicated captain of the Exxon Valdez left an
inexperienced third mate at the helm of the ship. Organizational factors include such items as
production pressures and cost-cutting, which resulted in most of the plant safety
systems in Bhopal being either inadequately designed or inoperable at the time
of the accident, and overly-rigid organizational hierarchy, exemplified by
NASA’s failure to focus on serious safety concerns raised by the engineers
closest to the design of the space shuttle.
Technological factors are typified by poor designs such as the booster
rocket o-rings on the space shuttle and the unstable Chernobyl-style
reactor. External environmental factors
include regulatory laxness, typified by the Coast Guard’s deteriorating
vigilance with regard to oil tanker traffic in the Port of Valdez, and lack of
emergency preparedness, a failure of both Union Carbide and the government of
India with respect to Bhopal.
With respect to the
Deepwater Horizon, all the facts are not yet in, but there appear to be an
abundance of all of these factors, from poor decisions on the part of the rig’s
operators (human), to production pressures from BP management (organizational),
to malfunctions in the blowout preventer (technical) to lack of vigilance of
drilling operations on the part of regulators and the difficulties encountered
in cutting off the flow of oil in mile-deep water (social and natural
environment).
Throughout the course,
students are challenged to evaluate the nature of "catastrophe" in
terms of human safety, environmental impact, and the role of advanced
technology in society. Again, the Gulf
accident has all of these characteristics in spades--eleven dead in the
explosion, the largest oil spill in US history with its ongoing ecological and
economic impacts, and yet another constant reminder of the costs of our oil
dependence.
Consideration is also
given in the course to the lessons learned from technological
catastrophes. Perhaps most pertinent to
this case is sociologist Lee Clarke’s analysis (1990) of the Exxon Valdez oil
spill in which he convincingly argued that there is no meaningful way to
respond to a large oil spill, and that attempts at preparing for and executing
such responses are fictions perpetrated by corporations and governments to mollify
the media and public. BP’s repeated
claim in TV commercials that they “will make this right” will sadly be a
teachable moment for decades to come.
Notes: portions of the above
are excerpted from Herkert, J. R., 2004, “A Multidisciplinary Course on
Technological Catastrophes.” Pp. 283-295 in D. F. Ollis et al., Eds., Liberal Education in Twenty-First Century
Engineering, New York, Peter Lang.
For Clarke’s argument see Clarke, L., 1990, Oil-spill fantasies, Atlantic Monthly (November): 65-77.
About the Author: Joe Herkert is Lincoln Associate
Professor of Ethics and Technology in ASU’s School of Letters and Sciences and
an associate professor at CSPO.
