It’s not often we get to preview the consequences of bad policy even before it is inked into the books. So, maybe we should regard a troubling new report — on some of the likely collateral damage of the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission’s pending new setback rules for the industry — as both a forewarning of doom and a last chance to pull out of the nosedive.

The commission tentatively approved the radical rule changes Sept. 28, quadrupling the setback for future drilling and fracking operations statewide. The new standards, set to take effect Jan. 1 after a final vote by the commission before Nov. 1, requires 2,000 feet between a drilling platform and occupied buildings, including homes and schools, instead of the current 500 feet.

To the many Coloradans who know little about the industry that makes it possible to heat their homes, cook their dinners and drive their cars, the commission’s edict is no doubt an abstraction. A mere matter of degrees.

On the other hand, to the relative few who understand what it takes to tap the world’s top energy resource — of which oil-and-gas-rich Colorado is a major supplier — the change promises to be devastating. As we noted here recently, the new rules, driven by a vocal and well-financed political fringe movement, render a significant amount of Colorado’s abundant oil and gas off limits.

Oil and gas industry representatives say that will compound — by magnitudes — the COVID-driven upheaval of a global energy economy that already has destabilized Colorado’s second-largest industry.

Their dire warnings are now being reinforced by a new analysis that looks at just one of the many sectors of the state and local economies that will be slammed by the shock waves.

As reported in Friday’s Gazette, real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield is predicting it would take downtown Denver’s market for office space seven years to recover from the impact of the potential vacancies that likely to result from the impact the setback rules.

“The oil and gas industry is a vital component to Colorado’s overall economy and the downtown Denver commercial real estate market,” the report said. “The proposed rulemaking, coupled with the crippling impacts of COVID-19, could cause downtown Denver’s overall office vacancy to surpass 20% for the first time since the early-2000s.”

The report says 33% of the central business district’s sublease space is used by the oil and gas industry and that the 2,000f-oot setback would cause a 50-60% reduction in workforce for extraction and production companies and the oil and gas service industry.

That would more than double the sublease inventory from 2 million to 4.2 million square feet of space.

The new setback rules could also reduce oil and gas jobs, which account for nearly 7% of downtown Denver’s total employment, the report found. That probably would cause corporations to reconsider their presence in Colorado.

The firm’s analysis is likely to be the first of many such truly worrisome warning signs. Yet, it could have been avoided if only the state’s policy makers had heeded a warning sign of a different sort — one signaled by Colorado voters just two years ago. That’s when the electorate soundly defeated a ballot proposal that would have imposed a similar setback requirement on the industry. That ballot measure had been authored by the same radical political fringe that propelled the commission’s action last month.

Instead of bowing to the will of voters, lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis pushed ahead with legislation that reshuffled the state’s oil and gas commission and handed it a new mandate — one that effectively gives a stiff thumb in the eye to the industry the commission regulates.

This is no way to treat an industry that not only supplies our state, and the world, with a critical, strategic energy source but that also is a cornerstone of Colorado’s economy. It’s worth restating that oil and gas production pays at least $600 million a year to fund K-12 and higher education. Studies have shown the industry, directly and indirectly, supports 250,000 Colorado jobs. Thousands of those are jobs that pay blue-collar workers significantly more than they will make doing anything else.

It is evident the hardcore green extremists behind these policies will stop at nothing to hobble Colorado’s ability to produce oil and gas, come what may. They are dogma driven and don’t care about the consequences for Colorado as a whole. The question is whether the members of the oil and gas commission is so in thrall to them as to be oblivious to most Coloradans.

As noted, one more vote lies ahead. Is it too late to hit the brakes on this reckless extremism?