I went into town the other day. Took the family to the new Devon Ice Rink downtown. The kids had a great time, I wound up a little sore from using unfamiliar muscles. There were a lot of people on the rink, and the atmosphere was quite pleasant. It was a pleasant sunny day, and we all could leave our coats on the nice new benches. We had had a freeze and some ice and snow a few days before, but now the rink was kept frozen by powerful cooling elements under the surface.
All this is new, and very nice. This whole plaza surrounding the Crystal Bridge, in the front yard of the new Devon Tower skyscraper, just got redone last year. It's a beautiful urban park with lots of nice features, thanks to generous donations from Devon, Chesapeake, and other major employers here in Oklahoma City.
Life is relatively good here right now. Unemployment is among the lowest in the country. Housing prices never went up before the crash, so there was no real estate bubble to burst. There has been a continual growth of new projects and developments in and near downtown. There are whole residential blocks and shopping districts where abandoned lots sat just a few years ago. We now have a pro basketball team, the Thunder, and they've done pretty well. Chesapeake and Devon have each built nice boathouses on the river, and we've turned into a major location for kayaking, regatta, and the like. It's been exciting to watch.
Like I said, we had a great day, in a nice place. So why, you ask, the title? Follow me, readers, beyond the orange twizzles...
All this holiday cheer is tempered by the sobering realization that unless we put a rapid end to the burning of fossil fuels in the next few years, the planet's climate and ecosystems will be thrown out of whack for thousands of years, most known species will go extinct, and most people alive will die over the rest of this century. All this prosperity I have told you about is largely driven by one industry, which nowadays calls itself the energy industry a/k/a the oil and gas industry a/k/a the global warming industry. Remember the those two generous corporate sponsors mentioned above, Devon and Chesapeake? That's Devon Energy and Chesapeake Energy, the two largest private employers in town. Those jobs pay well, and those prosperous employees contribute billions to the local economy.
Devon, Chesapeake, and a host of other smaller companies here are in the business of extracting oil and natural gas from the ground, selling it to be burnt,releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Their business models count on being able to do so well into the future. If the collective wisdom of the country and the planet could somehow be applied, these companies would have to declare most of their assets worthless and cease operations soon. Without the oil and gas industry, the economic fate of this city and several others in the region would completely tank. All those jobs, all that philanthropy, all that secondary business, would disappear. Oklahoma City would become Detroit in one blow. There would be no ice skating downtown any more. The nice new park would become neglected and overgrown.
Saving the planet will ruin this town. It's a hell of a choice.