How do we encourage more people to care to conserve?

Answer 1

Give them a good reason to want to conserve (of course your good reason may not be theirs').

The problem that much of the environmental movement has is that it is run by ideologues who want to save the environment for its own sake and who put that as their main value in life (or pretty close to it).

Most of the population on this planet (i.e. the people who vote on what gets built and what doesn't and who use all that power that comes from those lovely coal power plants the anti-nuclear lobby has caused to exist) happen to be more pragmatic and whilst they may value the environment for its own sake they tend to have more important (to them at least) priorities in life and are quite willing to sacrifice the environment for the sake of the more important things.

If you want to get those people (who are the majority) to actually conserve you've got to give them an incentive other than "it'll save the planet" because that incentive just won't be enough in a lot of cases. You'll also find that you need to make the ecofriendly option not require any sacrifices (if it does then you've already lost to the brownlash movement because most people would be quite happy to burn coal to run their air conditioners despite the consequences).

Looking towards energy efficiency is probably the wrong way to do things since if you have a sufficiently clean power source that can run a society then you can scale it up to run a larger society (or the same size society with higher per-capita energy use) and still have it clean. Anyone who says that we need to conserve energy to save the planet doesn't know what they're talking about.

Answer 2

Keep encouraging them to conserve every thing by showing and talking about it. Don't let someone disappoint you If you can get a group of people to take action and have them reach out to others you have done a lot

Answer 3

Life as we see it has changed so dramatically that conservation only lays for those less fortunate. A family that makes $40,000 a year is very conservative and yet a family that makes $80,000 a year becomes conservative for the fact of saving more money.
So the rule here is that the poor want money and the rich save money. Where's the concept?
How can a rich man save by being conservative when a poor man recycles for Conservative ways?

Answer 4

It depends on what kind of conservation you are talking about. If you are talking about environmental. I think you should prove to them that conservation is very simple and easy. Unfortunately as humans we are lazy creatures (myself included).

Example simple conservation - holding on to a can, bottle or piece of paper until it can be placed in a proper recycling bin. If a majority of people did this daily, you might not be asking this question.

It's not really a matter of them caring to conserve, but more of an issue of seeming too difficult.

Answer 5

Unfortunately many people refuse to let themselves believe that all this is very real and not much you can do will change their mind, also unfortunately we are all going to be victims of their as well as our own, shortsightedness. We were told about this 30 years ago and we've wasted all that time, where we could have been doing something, but we went out and built huge houses ( without solar features ), we bought ever bigger trucks etc., and all the while this information was right in front of us but nobody believed it, so it's no wonder that many still don't believe it.

Answer 6

Raise the price!!!!!!!!!!! I have long believed in a pollution surcharge and national sales tax in the USA along with the Treasury-part of the government collecting taxes not the IRS. We have to give an advantage to clean energy. But more we have to work on what we know. And here is what we know: Blacktop (roads and parking lots) and buildings heat cities; Air pollution causes lung (and other) diseases, deforestation causing more destruction (duststorms, hurricanes/cyclones all increasing deforestation) and destroys the ozone layer while heating earth surface; fires cause mud slides, deforestation and pollution-more heating surface temperatures; CFC's destroy the ozone layer raising skin cancer rates and killing off endanger species and increased surface temperatures; lighting produces ozone near the surface and raises air pollution levels-more heating; the suns increased magnetic field are causing increases in earthquakes (more destruction), volcanoes (wow, great distruction), sun spots and leading to more heating. Cars, airplanes, ships and most electricity production causes pollution, warmer temperatures and destruction. But most of this is in our control outside of the sun (Volcanoes, sun spots and earthquakes are part of the sun magnetic strength): We need to fix our part! That is why I founded CoolingEarth.org an geoengineering web sight.The USA Mayor's are on the right track, we can have control and economic growth. The fed gov is way out of step-even Congress. We also need a pollution surcharge to balance the field and advance new technologies. Where we are with global warming has never happened before. CO2 has never lead to temperature change, but temperature change has led to increases in CO2. The models are having to be made with little evidence!

Answer 7

To get my friends hooked on conserving I just led by example and eventually they caught onto it. For some reason if you make it "cool" others will follow sadly, or you can start a webpage to start a movement.

Answer 8

By example. Be the example and make yourself noticed for that example. Spread the word in day to day conversations but also try to make your efforts visible to others.

Answer 9

When I take a shower.

I wash down my hair. Shut off the water. Lather my hair. Turn on the water, and rinse.

Answer 10

start with your self.....
show to them....
be a model,,,,a good one....

you must take single small steps so that the community can leap a giant step.........