Tom France, of the National Wildlife Federation, organized a conference, “The Climate Challenge: Strategies for Montana’s Future.” FREE cosponsored last weekend’s Helena meeting. This effort was described as “a collaborative conference implementing a progressive, proactive approach, [to] address the growing global climate challenge.” It featured experts from agriculture, industry, economics, and conservation. Its goal was to produce “a working strategy for delivery to the Montana Legislature.” Both Pete Geddes, FREE’s executive VP, and I enjoyed participating.

FREE has produced several smaller conferences on climate change for federal judges. The scientific material presented at the NWF program reinforced the findings we present to judges. I found this program especially relevant, for it focused on implications of climate change for Montana. Not only did I learn about increased fire danger and obtain hard data on my impression of longer growing seasons, I experienced tribalism in action.

Here’s an insight I’d like to share. Economists are to “progressives” as bankers are to cowboys; both serve as reality checks on unconstrained visions. Join me as I develop this idea.

Bankers, and to a far lesser degree economists, contribute to society. Bankers provide funds to develop businesses, buy houses, and finance education. (Most also make loans for expressive activities -- RVs, pleasure boats, and trips to Vegas for example -- but this category isn’t important here.) In addition to facilitating the building of capital, bankers serve the critically important social function of thwarting silly ideas, i.e., activities unlikely to earn a return sufficient to repay the loan. In evaluating business propositions, bankers are motivated by their responsibility to stockholders.

Economists evaluate the costs and benefits of public policies that allocate funds to competing purposes. They are trained to measure the efficiency of alternative choices. This task is far more squishy and contentious than evaluating a loan for a specific project. Economists are rarely popular spokespersons, especially among politicians and their clientele.

While both are often resented, there is, however, an important difference. Bankers can veto imprudent plans while economists can only hector and admonish those who promote unrealistic policies. This was compellingly obvious at the conference.

Prof. Vince Smith, a nationally respected ag economist at MSU, gave a well-reasoned, sensitive, and good-humored analysis of the implications of global warming to Montana. His logic was identical to that presented by Rob Mendelsohn of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Nobel Prize winner Tom Schelling at several of our judges conferences, but Vince focused on Montana. It was an excellent example of economic thinking applied to an emotional and complex problem. I don’t know an economist who would have taken exception to his presentation.

Vince noted general scientific agreement that global warming is occurring, in part due to human causes, and that there are uncertainties about the speed and degree of change. He explained that warmer and wetter has different implications for crops and forests than would warmer and dryer -- and climate models differ as to which is more likely. He then explained that humans adjust much easier to slow than to rapid change.

Most climate models look out 100 years, but consider the USA in 1906: average income a mere $4000 in today’s dollars, no paved roads, few cars, no modern medicine, short lives. We can’t predict life two or three generations hence. After listing the risks that may accompany global warming he gave this guidance: “There is considerable evidence that a mixture of policy innovations...and markets can address all of these challenges at a relatively low cost compared to the costs of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.”

Did this make folks happy? No, for this was largely a tribal gathering where most folks already knew the right answers and these weren’t among them. Here are a few of the responses I heard. “He shouldn’t be on the program.” “I’d like to hit him.” (That from a sponsor.) “What do economists know about climate?” Mature and constructive dialogue indeed.

Professionally, I wandered into economics from political science and anthropology. Hence, tribalism isn’t new to me. However, I left this conference knowing a bit more about climate science and with the understanding that economists are to “progressives” as bankers are to cowboys.