Abstracting Harm

It is an interesting phenomenon that most people will try and help an injured wild animal, but when you try and motivate them to save the very same animals habitat you get very little response. I wonder if it would be more cost effective to spend the rehabilitation money on habitat instead? Clearly this would help in the long run, but it is (to me) harder to sell than helping the immediately affected animals.

This is a overall problem of our society: disconnection from consequences. When you buy gold you usually don't think about the mercury or cyanide leaking into waterways and killing hundreds if not thousands of animals and rendering the land contaminated for thousands of years. Just like when (most) people think of going to war they don't think of maimed or dying soldiers. It's sad to think that people knowingly hide these consequences and even sadder to think that most people would rather not know.