Before it hit the mainstream, the green movement was often criticized as having its head in the clouds. Sure, saving the environment is a brilliant idea, but it’s just too expensive and will inconvenience too many people. Ecologists, with their earnest messages about rainforests, corals and other delicate ecosystems, were seen as part of this.

Yet that picture might be changing. One of the main themes of this week’s meeting was the idea of pragmatism in dealing presenting ecological solutions and recommendations to policymakers. That’s reflected as much as anything by the sheer number of economists giving talks here.

Pragmatism is a key consideration in the emerging field of biofuels, which draws together economics, agriculture, ecology, climate change and fuel security. A headache for policymakers, and one that requires sensible, well reasoned answers.

Some are more willing to embrace pragmatism than others. The Society for Ecological Restoration, which co-hosted the meeting, suggested that ecological restoration be co-opted for the fight against climate change. But do the money and the timescale involved, is that really better than shorter-term options such asmonoculture forestry, or indeed biofuels?

Nevertheless, many pragmatic ecologists, whether concerned with trees, birds or economics, are worried about where the biofuels industry is going. The feeling is that policymakers, offering huge tax breaks to commercial ventures to make bioethanol from corn grain, are feeding the corn market to the detriment of efforts to preserve rangelands or even to grow biofuel grass crops on them. The government is not taking the pragmatic approach, they argue, by throwing money at getting fuel from a food crop that requires buckets of fertilizer and intensive farming methods. The fears are, however, that the horse has already bolted on this one, and herding it back in is a long-term effort.

Economists are hard at work trying to discover which solutions will be the best weapons against the looming energy crisis. If the infrastructure can be developed that allows species such as switchgrass to be harvested from poor-quality lands, then that might be a good bet for alleviating reliance on gasoline. But that will require presenting a thorough economic case to policy-makers – much as ecologists in other areas have to stress the monetary and social value of preserving wild ecosystems. As with so much of the modern green movement, you can’t just ask policymakers to do things out of the goodness of their hearts – you have to tell them exactly how much financial damage they’ll suffer if they don’t take your ideas seriously.