"The data is overwhelming," said University of Montana professor Paul Polzin. "There is no correlation between growth and amenities." Economist Myles Watts of Montana State University laments that mining, factory, and timber jobs are "the sort of jobs that will lift the standard of living for a county or even an entire state." These comments seem to ignore empirical evidence. Polzin and Watts long for a return to the "traditional" Western economy. Unfortunately, this "looking through the rearview mirror " approach will not help us prepare for the 21st Century.

Throughout most of this century the West has considered natural resource industries (e.g., logging, mining, and ranching) as central to its economic success. Global forces are now shaping a new economic landscape. The market forces favoring the growth of service-and information-based industries now sprawl across the West just as elsewhere. Rapid and often unsettling changes threaten to overwhelm many rural communities. These changes raise profound questions about the region's dependency on exploiting nature.

The West's attractive environment has tremendous economic value. Roadless lands, wilderness areas, free-flowing rivers, national parks and forests, and healthy wildlife habitat stimulate much of the region's new economic activity. These amenity values attract talented entrepreneurs. Freed by email, FedEx, and the internet, "modem cowboys" (and cowgirls) relocate to the region. All seek a simpler, less stressful life and high environmental quality. Gallatin County, Mont. is typical.

* From 1969 to 1994 Gallatin County added 26,525 new jobs. The fastest growing sectors were Services (29 percent), Retail Trade (24 percent), and Government (20 percent);

* 38 percent of the growth in personal income over the last 25 years came from non-labor sources (e.g., pensions, retirement, rent, royalties and Social Security). Employment and personal income growth in the traditional extractive industries remained flat or declined slightly over the same period.

Reductions in transportation costs and advances in information technologies make Gallatin County attractive for firms making highly specialized products. Liberated from geographic constraints, firms whose goods have high value to weight ratios (unlike cars and steel) can relocate in places attractive to employees who seek environmental quality. These new businesses are independent from the West's brittle, subsidy-dependent economy. They have no stake in myths celebrating the primacy of commodity interests at the expense of the natural environment. And they recognize these myths as costly for they adversely affect the region's amenities which attracted them.

But many Westerners still believe that the natural resource economy trumps all. They see other economic and social goods as dependent on the largely unrestrained exploitation of the natural environment. This misconception fosters much mischief. And the facts belie these beliefs. Jobs in our extractive industries remain notoriously unstable. While overall employment in the Pacific Northwest has steadily increased over the last twenty years, employment in wood products has fluctuated widely. Even during the 1980s (which included record levels of timber harvest from federal lands) 55,000 jobs were lost in the wood products industry. Wood products workers were three times more likely to be laid off than those elsewhere in the economy.

There are many reasons for the decline in the traditional extractive sectors: falling commodity prices, technological improvements that reduce the labor needed for processing raw materials, and substitutes (e.g., fiber composites that replace aluminum and copper). Resource extraction jobs remain important. But they will not lift our standard of living.

We can not define the West's future for it must evolve in response to opportunities. Unfortunately, when most of the region's politicians are wedded to special interests representing industries of the past, better options are foreclosed. Myopic politicians demand increases in commodity production from public lands despite strong evidence that such policies constrain the economic, social, and cultural potential of local communities. Resource dependent communities that seek benefits of economic growth should foster activities that enhance their ability to attract and retain new economic activity. Ironically, ill-planned resource extraction delays this important transition. This perpetuates hardship and slows progress.

Let's be clear: environmental protection alone will not assure everyone has a better future. Everywhere workers with lower levels of education experience problems transferring to expanding sectors of the new economy. Schools which produce a well-educated, technologically fluent work force are critical. Communities acquiring resources to take advantage of new opportunities will prosper. And environmental quality is a key resource.

For the 100 years following the Civil War the West has enjoyed a cultural, economic, and political coherence. The glue was the exploitation of natural resources. But a new coherence is emerging. It forces the region's citizens to confront the problems of often subsidized commodity production. Political allocation of the West's resources has kept the region politically and economically immature and inhibited constructive reforms. Constructive alternatives that foster growth must include sound principles of ecology and economy.