Endangered Species For Sale.

Arguably, the most common tactic used by most animal rights and environmental advocates is to encourage compassion.  Instead of trying to warm the cold hearts of carnivores and fur hags, perhaps we should try something else: encourage greed.  The people who are selfishly running our environment into the ground and contributing the killing of millions of animals every year for food, are typically the same people who value money over everything else.  They are the greedy.

What if, in a very jujitsu like move, activists could redirect that passion for money into helping save endangered or threatened species?

A team of biologists have suggested in their latest article that contracts for responsibility for a threatened species be sold to investors by the United States government.  The money spent on buying the contract would go to wildlife conservation programs.  If the species the contract was for started to increase its population, the investor would get money.  If the species reaches a critically low population then the contract would be voided.  The idea would be that investors would work to protect the species using their influence and wealth in order to see a return on their investment.

Some have compared this to the current U.S. mortgage system.  Perhaps adopting a failed economic model in an effort to try and save the planet may not work but maybe it’s worth a shot.

What do you think?