Deep ecologists urge us to "return to nature". If we reconnect with nature in a primitive, spiritual way, we may spare mother earth. Reject science, technology, and the market for small-scale, Edenic lifestyles.

I like their goals of environmental protection and sustainability, but their means are dangerously misguided. A "return to nature" will increase our dependence and consumption of natural resources and our ecological footprint.

In the real world, environmental quality must harmonize with economic progress and sustainable growth. Entrepreneurs catalyze this harmony by innovating new and better technologies, business practices, and institutions and arrangements. They distance mankind's activities from nature, leaving more room for both.

Entrepreneurs often convert industrial waste into useful products. In the last century, logs were "boomed" into rafts and floated to mills. Some of the best, most dense old-growth sunk to the bottom of waterways. Superior Logging Co. is planning to "harvest" 30,000 of these logs from the bottom of Lake Superior. Company founder Scott Mitchen says, "We're not endangering any spotted owls.... This wood is totally PC. Any environmentalist has got to love it."

Similarly, Patagonia makes plastic trash into fabric for clothing. Profitable recycling industries across the nation reduce our dependence on virgin natural resources. A Vancouver, BC firm has invented a process to dispose of organic garbage (which accounts for 80% of an average American's rubbish) by superheating it into a fuel that, when burned with coal, produces low-pollution power. Their eco-friendly enterprise relieves pressures on landfills, sanitizes coal power plants, and scores profits.

The Pacific Northwest is a prime example of how distancing ourselves from the environment can protect nature. Now, more Northwesterners write software than log trees. And, some privately owned forests are effectively modelled and managed with computers -- increasing productivity and reducing acres cut.

"Cyberfarms" exemplify entrepreneurial innovation fostering environmental quality and economic progress. One pioneer in this field, Ashtech Inc., operates from Belgrade, Mont. They help precision farmers use satellite-based Global Position Systems (GPS) to receive essential agricultural data as they drive combines, fertilizer trucks, and spray rigs over their fields. GPS information tracks variations in elevation, soil composition, weather, and productivity -- down to the square foot. Cyberfarmers can then make minute adjustments in seeding, fertilizing, and irrigating their fields.

Precision farming helps improve crop yields, producing more food on less land. In addition to being more productive, cyberfarmers have a "green" thumb. With GPS technology farmers no longer need to uniformly blanket their fields with pesticides, water, fertilizer, and other potentially environmentally damaging inputs. Rather, they can target specific amounts to the areas where they'll be most beneficial. They save money by reducing chemicals, fertilizers insecticides, herbicides, and water. High-technology farming can help meet the growing demands of a hungry planet by reducing our use of the land itself.

"Cybercommuting" enables us to tread more lightly on the earth as workers ply their trade from home. Improvements in telecommunication technology enable people to transmit projects and ideas instantaneously across long distances and develop "virtual offices". Why drive into the office? Shoppers can buy their fall wardrobe by phone from the Lands' End catalog, have their Wall Street Journal delivered via email, or buy their next book from "Amazon.com" on the Internet.

Cybercommuting and the telecommunications revolution have enormous potential for reducing pollution, resource consumption, and environmental impact. Technological progress makes possible new, environmentally friendly ways to work by decreasing costs and increasing productivity. Concurrently, environmentally sensitive commuting and communicating leads to economic progress.

These entrepreneurial success stories imply an environmnetalism nearly opposite that of conventional environmentalists. Rather than "return to nature", we must "decouple" ourselves from nature. Divorcing economic growth from natural resources gives nature room to adjust and repair. The decoupling also promotes the prosperity so strongly linked to environmental sensitivity. Richer is not only healthier and safer (more nutritious foods and fewer occupational hazards), richer is also ecologically more sound.

Economic development increasingly comes from innovating technologies and business practices -- not exploiting more natural resources. Entrepreneurs catalyze these developments. By encouraging "green" entrepreneurs, we foster low environmental impact. When green thumbs grow better crops with satellites or hitch a ride to work on the Internet, creative resources help nature.

We can learn from cyberfarms and cybercommuters. Both harmonize economic progress with environmental protection. They ignore or reject the "return to nature" dictum. They generate economic progress through innovations with benign environmental implications. Environmental policy will improve when environmentalists recognize that environmental protection increases with such economic prosperity.

The first rule of policy analysis is simple: not all good things go together. Fortunately, some do. The task for the policy entrepreneur is to find responsible and sensible alternatives to regulations which stifle entrepreneurial success.