The Oil and Gas industry have a lot to learn from other safety and mission critical domains such as military capability, aviation, nuclear power generation, space technology etc. In such environments we have developed system safety criteria, capability maturity models and mission assurance protocols to minimise the likelihood of systemic failures like the GoM oil spill.

In aviation gravity is treated with the utmost respect. Why don't we treat the environment in the same way...after all it's health, vitality and resilience are critical to our survival as a species...perhaps we should start treating this planet as the ultimate safety and mission critical system.

Having worked 30 years in the non-oil mining industry, I'm surprised that anyone would claim that any human activity is risk-free and/or has fail safe back-ups in place. The author has set up something of a straw man by suggesting that the oil industry is claiming there was never any risk. The question was and always should be whether the level of risk is acceptable in comparison with the returns that might be achievable from the proposed undertaking.
The author should also do some research on natural oil seeps into the marine environment around the planet. My guess is that mother nature pumps more petroleum into our seas and oceans than human beings, although we choose to pick highly sensitive areas to have our 'accidents' and to allow very large volumes of oil to escape over a short period of time, whereas natural seeps have a low flow rate that persist for hundreds or thousands of years.