+1. Besides being a good story, the piece is also informative, and that part, unfortunately, is misinformation.
On the other hand, let me introduce a wild hypothesis: There are millions of planets out there just like Earth, except that microorganisms there never got around to digesting lignin. Deadwood and oxygen piled up on the ground and in the atmosphere respectively, until an epic fire decimated the biosphere, and only microscopic ocean life remained, if as much. The oldest such planets light up every billion years or so. The cycle is too short for complex life to get intelligent. This process is The Great Filter [1]. Earth is the only exception.
If that's true, than Mr. R&D did care a lot about future disasters.