Listening to the Devil's advocate, not just preaching to the choir

When considering conservation I think it is useful to engage with someone playing Devil’s advocate.  For a long time individuals have worked in conservation because they believe that it is a good and worthy cause.  They believe that nature is priceless and deserves to be protected and enjoyed by people.  The challenge for professional conservationists is converting this personal belief into action, taken by the public, via their professional work. When considering this problem I bear in mind two very different attitudes.

Self righteous hippy:
This attitude can be summed up as follows: ‘ I value nature for its intrinsic value and I am correct in doing so.  You should also value nature in the same way as me.  If you do not value nature in the same way as me you are wrong.  If you chose to behave in a selfish manner which degrades nature (but benefits you) then you are doing wrong and you are a bad person’.

Selfish individual:
To take an extreme example to illustrate my point, consider an only child and do not wish to have to have children who feels: ‘I do not care about any damage I cause the world as long as it does not affect me.  I live in a developed nation and am therefore likely to be shielded from the effects of any natural degradation.  I will probably never travel to Africa so I don’t care if Lions become extinct.  I act selfishly, why shouldn’t I?’.

The self righteous hippy attitude leaves me extremely frustrated.  An intrinsic valuation of nature is a personal attitude or valuation.  A personal valuation, by definition, is not wrong or right.  If the evidence suggests that most people act selfishly then people should be expected to act selfishly.  Instead of wasting energy on being indignant a better option is to consider how to make conservation the selfish option or how to increase the number of people who hold a similar intrinsic valuation (in a morally acceptable, non brainwashing way).  I believe that the selfish individual is beyond the reproach of a professional conservationist.  It is this person that conservation must listen to.  If this person can be convinced to act in a way which benefits nature then conservation will have succeeded. 

If flights are cheap then don’t get angry at people for having a large carbon footprint and if farmers are subsidised to produce food unsustainably then don’t morally reproach the individual farmers.  It is largely the role of the state to correct these problems by taxing flights or listening to the National Farmer’s Union, scientists and economists and making an informed, logical decision regarding which actions farmers should be paid to carry out.