It’s always been maybe a bit too easy to appeal to people emotionally when arguing to save endangered species, or protect diverse ecosystems. Tug on some heartstrings by showing footage of polar bear cubs at play, or a desert sunrise, and you’ve got people hooked. For a moment.

But when it comes time to make decisions that really affect these issues, are those images still in mind? Or does it come down to hard, cold, economic sense? As we’ve seen over and over, economics almost always wins over the vague sense of responsibility or emotional ties to a place or species.

But now the tables may be turning. As more and more environmental advocates drop the warm and fuzzy arguments for purely economic ones, the messages carry more weight and the outcomes are win-win. A recent NRDC On Earth Magazine article describes how in Kern County, CA, a bastion of conservative values, ranchers are looking to wind energy installations as a way to prop up the value of their private ranches, and still continue to live and work there. This has the added value of moving some of the renewable energy development pressure off of nearby public lands, too. A win-win-win.

The same logic is being applied in Columbia, according to a recent MNN.com article, where 10,000 local jobs have been created by using coffee waste to fertilize new crops of mushrooms. The waste from the mushroom harvest is used to make animal feed. This creates a triple cash flow, and another win-win-win.

Now some strictly economic arguments are being applied to biodiversity and species survival efforts as well. When nature has provided so much guidance for pharmaceutical research, product development and food supplies, it’s crazy to let species and habitats go at such an alarming rate. So why not provide some strictly economic values to environments and species in order give decision makers some food for thought in a language they can understand?

A hectare of intact coral reef, for instance, can be worth up to $1 million a year for tourism, up to $189,000 for protecting coasts from storms, up to $57,000 as a source of genetic materials and up to $3,818 for fisheries, according to a preliminary U.N.-backed study in late 2009.

As we struggle to find ways to get the message out, it’s proving more and more valuable to speak the language we can all understand. Dollars and sense.

Read the MNN.com article: Saving Endangered Species: It’s about the economy, stupid >

Read the On Earth Magazine article: Renewable Energy Catches on in Red America >

Tags: endangered species, green business, renewable, renewable energy, sustainable business, wind energy