A healthy environment and a healthy economy can go hand-in-hand.

There is a myth that Audubon is anxious to dispel. This myth says that you cannot have a healthy, growing economy and a healthy environment. We must choose. Jobs or a healthy ecosystem. How wrong can an idea be?

In fact, when you think about it, and ask the following questions- How long can we continue to live off our resource capital? How long can we foul our global nest? How long can we take without regard for the consequences?it is quite apparent that we cannot continue to see life as an either/or choice. We must have both and we can have both.

To do it we must make some fundamental changes in our thinking, in our values, in our lifestyles, and in our daily habits.

Today, we are dealing with a quickly "greening" world, one in which people are ahead of their government leaders in the environmental protection laws they want, are ahead of the corporations in saying what products they will buy, are ahead of the investment brokers in saying what they want their money invested in, and are ahead of their employers in saying what working conditions they will accept.

Against this "green" consumer, employment, and investor background, it is clear that it is not a matter of if the world goes to a basis of environmentally sustainable economic development, it is a matter of when.

What we must do as environmental and business leaders is come together very quickly, and start this mutual education process that ends this perceived conflict of jobs versus the environment, of short-term profit versus Iong-term survival. This is a false argument that will not solve any problems we face.

Audubon is familiar with this false argument in every comer of the United States, from the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest, where bumper stickers read "Save A Logger, Kill an Owl," to the public rangelands, where the Wise Use movement is opposed to environmentalists' efforts to restore the prairies, to the tundra environment of the Arctic slope of Alaska, where it is presented as a stark but misleading choice: oil-based prosperity or continued subsistence-level poverty for the Gwitch'in Indians.

What we are faced with is a fundamental difference in values, and what we must do, and do quickly, is get this debate out in the open and understood.

Why is the president of the National Audubon Society talking about resource economics? Isn't Audubon about birds and wildlife ?

Our answer is that to protect birds and wildlife we must protect ecosystems and habitat. And to do this brings us very quickly to some fundamental issues of allocating and managing natural resources on a global scale.

We must come to terms with our planer's finite resource base. We must see that a healthy ecological system will sustain a healthy economic system. We must assign real value to the natural world and the resources we use and abuse. We have to take the long-term view of our world economy. We cannot base it on the quarterly profit and loss statement, or our annual report to the shareholders.

There are new business opportunities in the "green" market, in a world of increasingly environmentally conscious consumers. Strict environmental standards in Europe and Japan have led to innovarive, competitive companies, less pollution and more efficient use of resources.

Just look, for example, at the U.S. national energy strategy. The Bush Administration energy strategy is polluting, wasteful, nonrenewable and overly dependent on oil, much of it imported. Think of the business opportunities for companies with an energy policy based on the opposites - clean, efficient, renewable and home-grown.

American corporate culture is undergoing an environmental evolution. Some companies are seeing the "green" market as a new strategic business opportunity. This "greening" of investor, the consumer and the employee is moving faster than are corporations and governments.

Audubon is prepared to do much more to stimulate this businessenvironment dialogue, in addition to setting a good example by restoring a 100-year-old structure to be twice as energy efficient as other buildings in New York City.

We will never shy away from talking to business corporations about doing things differently. We will talk to business leaders anywhere, any time about changing their environmental habits.

Audubon is committed to taking the lead in reversing our ecological decline.

It is a visionary idea that we hope will make the best use of all the talent available to Audubon, one that will contribute to constructive solutions to the challenge we all face - the construction of a sustainable relationship with the natural resource base that is the foundation for our society and our economy.

The alternative of continuing ecological decline is not acceptable. Our challenge, at Audubon and as a society, is to get people to see, and see very soon, that what is good for the spotted owl is good for the long-term protection of the loggers' jobs. We must see that what is good for the ecological health of this planet is good for the economic future of mankind.

Peter A.A. Berle is president, National Audubon Society, New York, N.Y. National Audubon Society has 600,000 members and 516 chapters, located in the U.S., Central America and South America.