COLUMN LEFT/ TOM BATES / LONI HANCOCK : California Can Do Well by Doing Good : We can rebuild the economy as well as balance our lives with the realities of a finite planet.

Our car’s headlights reflect a blinding white off the falling snow. In the wake of snow and cinders kicked up by the logging trucks, we can hardly see the highway. Once again nature proves who’s boss. All our modern technology doesn’t matter. Our visit to our grandson must be delayed; we can’t get there today.

Certainly Californians, after six years of drought, major earthquakes, a devastating urban firestorm and huge wilderness fires, know that nature hasn’t been conquered, but must be lived with in a spirit of respect.

As we move beyond the mentality of conquest, we increasingly realize that the carrying capacity of our planet is finite and fragile. And we seek new ways to organize life that are in balance with nature.

In California our economy is equally in a blinding storm. The abrupt winding down of California’s military economy confronts us with an extraordinary challenge and imperative. Unlike snow storms, however, economic arrangements are the creation of human beings and, to a large degree, can be shaped. We have the historic opportunity to turn our immense engineering and manufacturing capacity toward the next global frontier--products needed for an environmentally sound future, like electric cars, smokestack scrubbers and much more.

However, developing a vigorous, profitable and sustainable economy requires both new individual and public philosophies.

An individual philosophy has been emerging steadily over the last decade, one that recognizes each person’s responsibility for the stewardship of our fragile planet. Californians in increasing numbers are doing their part to reduce the stream of waste and individual pollution.

We now need a public philosophy and program to support individual actions. This includes a determination to clean up the problems we have created, to restore the environment and to invent and manufacture products needed worldwide for environmentally sustainable development.

This philosophy will recognize that California’s natural resources also include human beings. “Use it up and throw it out” should be an attitude that is as unacceptable for people as it is for bottles. We can and must recycle and restore our people, whether they be highly trained engineers who have been working in the military economy, or impoverished youth who need good educations and jobs. The economy we shape must place high priority on industries that meet environmental needs while providing stable well-paying jobs.

An economy of stewardship will put California in a position of leadership in developing programs and products needed for global survival. Ours is a state that, because of its feisty willingness to experiment, has seen many economic “firsts”--from tax revolts to tight regulations for clean air and toxic disposal. We can also be first in meeting global market demand for sustainable products and technologies. We can do well by doing good.

What can government do? Plenty.

State and local government can bring together business, university and community leaders to develop a consensus on environmentally sound development. We can increase research and investment and remove outdated barriers to new technologies. We can establish environmental goals and identify the products and services needed to meet these goals. We can create new markets by direct governmental purchase of recycled and environmentally sound products. And we can educate our citizens to play a responsible and productive role in the work force and the economy. These are among the issues that will be discussed at next month’s California economic summit.

We can no longer continue on our present course in California. The wasteful military economy with its frightening specter of violence and destruction is winding down--and thank goodness for that. California can now become a leader in creating and marketing products desperately needed by a world that is depleting itself of natural resources, and increasingly, drowning in its own waste.

Long before Europeans came to this land, Native Americans taught that it was essential to live in balance with nature, and when making important decisions, to project the impact of each choice for seven generations.

We are at such an important decision point now. We need not remain at impasse on the icy highway. We can draw on the wisdom of the past and combine it with contemporary ingenuity to build a sound road that will secure the future for generations to come.