One of life's greatest challenges is educating our children for an unknown future. Historically, people expected the future to be much like the past. This predictability is long past.

How can we cope and responsibly prepare our youth for the unknown? It's helpful to understand economic forces and anticipate opportunities.

We can learn from Montana's history. First the fur trade decimated the beaver. Next went the bison. Then we had 100-plus years of high grading gold and timber. Even after exploiting all of that transitory wealth, we still have America's finest environment. To squander it would be shortsighted at best.

Montana's traditional industries -- farming, ranching, mining, and forestry -- face rough times. Unfortunately for families who have a history and a culture within these industries, the future ain't what it was. But we haven't adjusted to new realities. The consequences of this cultural, political, and economic lag will be costly indeed.

Our Legislature is missing opportunities. For example, they apparently believe that by reducing the environmental constraints that the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) puts on traditional industries, they will bring back the past.

But all the best timber has been harvested. And instead of finding nuggets of gold, it's now a few hundredths of an ounce of gold per ton of ore. Farming and ranching face global competition, and subsidies to agriculture continue to rise.

Montana's political lifeguards and activity directors now in Helena tend to ignore or pretend away these underlying economic forces. They seem not to understand causality, complexity, natural capital, or the importance of investing in human capital through education and research.

Human and natural resources gravitate toward most highly valued uses. Today, increased material well-being has heightened sensitivity in some arenas of life, namely appreciation of the natural environment. Montana has spectacular natural amenities, and it is prudent to recognize their value when we consider our children's opportunities.

The Legislature's failure to recognize the positive links among education, wealth, and a Green ethos is a prescription for mischief and worse. While thinking of the current legislative session, I recalled my anthropology studies and the Ghost Dance of the Plains Indians of the late 1800s.

The once proud Sioux found their free-roaming life destroyed, the buffalo gone, themselves confined to reservations dependent on Indian agents for subsistence. In a desperate attempt to return to their glory days, many sought salvation in a new mysticism preached by a Paiute shaman called Wovoka. He called himself the Messiah and prophesied that the dead would soon join the living and the Indians could live in the old way surrounded by plentiful game. A tidal wave of new soil would cover the earth, bury the Whites, and restore the prairie. To hasten the event, the Indians must dance the Ghost Dance.

The Montana Legislature is doing its own ghost dance - trying to revive the traditional industries by reducing the environmental constraints. Ironically, they are sacrificing the state's most valuable long-run resource, environmental quality.

Here's an alternative. Build our economy and communities upon appreciation of our amenities and ecology. Recognize the importance of well-educated youth to the entrepreneurs who are attracted to Montana's natural and cultural advantages.

Today's best bets are not in mills and mines but rather in minds and good character. This requires substantial investments in education. And in fundamental tax reform, not relaxed environmental standards. Successful entrepreneurs are sensitive to income taxes. Ours, among the highest in the nation, are punitive. They repulse many who could provide good jobs.

Here's a modest suggestion. Dramatically reduce or eliminate the income tax and replace it with a sales tax targeted toward education. Concurrently, recognize the cultural and ecological benefits of living in an agricultural and forest products economy rather than a theme park. Traditional industries have their place -- even sound mining. The Stillwater Mining Company, for example, has an excellent environmental record and provides about 1,200 well paying jobs in Montana.

These are trying times and there is no simple and easy answer. Our Legislature should recall that the Ghost Dance ended in 1891 with the Battle of Wounded Knee. That lesson is clear and ignored at great peril.