NORMAN - Oklahoma, a few people finally have agreed to talk about what's good for you, instead of what's good for them.
For three days last week, a broad assortment of Oklahomans put aside their personal interests to focus on your future at the Oklahoma Academy town hall meeting at the Norman Employee Development Center.
They didn't solve all your problems, but they made a commitment to search for ways to protect your future for generations to come.
In a state that built its future a quarter-section of land at a time, the need to look that far beyond the horizon may not make much sense to the masses, whose contentment also may have something to do with the state's abundance of land, clean air and water.
As much as it is a land of plenty, Oklahoma also is a land of convenience, where we can drive our own vehicles with ease and at a reasonable cost anywhere we want to go and where we can build a place to live anywhere we want it to be.
Compared with Arizona's water shortages or Chicago's sprawl, most Oklahomans could well say, "What's the problem?"
But Julie Knutson, president of the Oklahoma Academy, is afraid all that will change at the rate Oklahoma is depleting its natural resources and defacing its landscape.
"We are a young state with opportunities, but we have to start making some choices about the future if we want to affect how future generations live or whether they will even want to be here," she said.
The academy turned those long-range concerns into a topic -- Oklahoma's environment: pursuing a balance -- for this year's meeting. The 125 members in attendance then were challenged to determine how Oklahoma can maintain the advantage it has of being "fresher and healthier" than other states while pursuing other commercial and social interests.
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