The Gallatin Institute links writers of the West with environmental economists. Last weekend poets, novelists, historians and essayists spent three days exploring ideas and ideals with policy analysts at the Gallatin Gateway Inn, a beautifully restored railroad hotel between Bozeman and West Yellowstone, Montana.

Such communication is something new because the participants come from disparate tribes. Their brains seem programed to see and process different kinds of information. Artists and analysts seldom mingle easily. A shared commitment to help build a sustainable next West, based upon local communities and respect for the lessons of our history and bio-geography, brought them together.

Why intermingle artists and economists? Mixing cultures is difficult and dangerous. It's a risky venture but one worth undertaking. Writers sensitize us to values and to new ways of seeing them. Analysts help us understand how we might better cooperate to realize those values.

I've known sensitive people who define economists as those who "know the price of everything but the value of nothing". At best, they are only half right; as Thomas Sowell observed, the variables which economists can measure are not those that matter most.

This is inherent to the nature of the world. No matter how smart, how well funded, or how powerful their computer, analysts will never put a good metric on friendship, beauty, trust or peace. Good economists know the limitations of their discipline.

Yet microeconomics, the study of choice in public and private arenas, has important explanatory power. This discipline has great potential for improving environmental policy. Any proposal for reform that violates economic principles or the laws of nature is doomed.

When we apply these economic principles to problems, we can make predictions. Specifically, if some behavior's cost, in terms of reputation, comfort or money, increases, and the benefits of that behavior remain constant, then we'll see less of that behavior. For example, if litterers were subjected to the lash and branded on their foreheads with a L, then we'd see less littering. Conversely, if landowners were rewarded for attracting and harboring endangered species, rather than penalized as they are now, more species would be safe. The principles are quite simple but have profound implications.

It is likely that the evolutionary process has hard-wired these responses into our nature; they are strong survival characteristics. People who act in accordance with these principles are more likely to do well and enjoy a good life than those who do not. I have long argued that economics so understood is merely a division of the more general field of evolutionary biology.

Understanding of economic principles helps us separate hopes for the future from expectations about that future. As smart people experience life, they are ever better at making these distinctions.

This ability to distinguish hopes from expectations is an important measure of practical intelligence. Those who lack it are most charitably described as naive. But some old-line paleo-enviros still reject economic analysis. As one said, "the word economics makes me hiss like The Hobbit's Gollum: I hates it, I hates it, I hates it forever."

Is it ethically or intellectually responsible to remain willfully ignorant? Thanks to the work of researchers such as Lynn Scarlett, Randal O'Toole and Tom Power, sincere environmentalists increasingly see the value of political economy and policy analysis.

This helps explain why environmentalists have become skeptical about utopian schemes. As smart people experience life's successes and failures, they develop an intuitive sense of these economic principles. They recognize that there are no perfect solutions, only many competing tradeoffs.

Learning by trial and error is grossly inefficient. Explanation of principles by sensitive and empathetic teachers works much better. However, economists are selected for analytical skills and abstract logic, not empathy and sensitivity. Economists are among the few who find Calculus a compelling form of communication. Few economists communicate easily with artists.

Economists' powerful analytic leverage can help us deal with problems, but only if they connect and communicate with those who care deeply about environmental quality. Most people need to know how much you care before they care how much you know. If economists are perceived as calculating not compassionate, their contributions will be resisted.

Rejection of analysis and economic reasoning retards environmental reform. The success of dialogues, such as the one hosted by the Gallatin Institute, gives us prudent optimism as we contemplate the next West.