U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar lifted the ban on deepwater drilling two weeks ago, finishing a four month moratorium on offshore drilling placed after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster that occurred last summer.

Companies now have to adhere to new strict rules and regulations on drilling including testing protocols, third-party verifications and other restrictions as part of the new risk reduction measures in order to avoid them.

For some reason, many people believe that to avoid such spill, we should completely refrain from drilling. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a political lobby non-profit organization, have launched a campaign asking for a complete stop of drilling. You might have received an e-mail from Iowa PIRG asking you to sign a petition to halt the offshore drilling. The slogan of the campaign is “no drills, no spills.”

I wonder what would be our life like if, for any task we are given, we decide to refrain from performing such task when we make a mistake, claiming that this is the solution to avoid any similar mistakes in the future.

We probably wouldn’t have airplanes now if such approach was followed by the Wright brothers. In the 1890s, Orville and Wilbur Wright were inspired by Otto Lilienthal, the first person to have well-documented successful gliding flights and known as the Glider King. In 1896, Lilienthal was killed in the plunge of his glider. He fell from a height of 56 feet and broke his spine. The accident did not refrain the Wright brothers from trying to fly. Had they thought “no flying, no death‚” we probably would be living in a different world.

Similarly, when Space Shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003, killing all of its seven crew members, the solution was not to cancel all NASA missions to outer space. On the contrary, the space shuttle program was suspended, an investigation was lead to know the technical problem that lead to such disaster, and in 2005, the program resumed with Space Shuttle Discovery after taking all precautions so that the 2003 disaster does not repeat.

I believe that “no drills, no spills” is a smart slogan only if we think that “no driving cars, no accidents” or “no trying, no failure‚” are smart slogans. So, as we still rely on gas, and until we can completely rely on a renewable source of energy, we ought to be practical.

We do need deepwater drilling; and while the last summer oil spill was a horrible disaster, I don‘t believe that the solution is to completely stop drilling, but to ensure the safety of the process.