Can conservationists and the environmental movement please stop trying to and calling for attempts to communicate with your average ‘X factor viewer’? I’ve seen this plea in a few different places recently. It is wrong for a number of reasons.

1. It assumes that your average X factor viewer exists.

2. It is patronizing – it assumes that liking the X factor and understanding nature conservation in its traditional language of valuing nature are mutually exclusive

3. I understand that this comes from a place of ‘meeting people where they are’.

4. However, evidence shows that everyone in society holds values linked to caring for the environment, and the British Social Attitudes Survey even shows that these are the predominant values in society.

5. It is exclusive and elitist – it assumes that the message ‘care for nature because it’s important and we need to protect it’ needs to be modified for a certain type of person on society.

6. To me its laden with an underlying snobbishness about perceived house-bound urbanites who don’t understand nature in the way conservationists and the rural middle classes do and need it explained in a different way.

7. It feels to me like a shortcut and lazy thinking – instead of addressing the visibility and channels of our messages, it’s easier to assume that a segment of the population is unable to understand our messages than to admit that maybe we’re not reaching out far enough or into the right places.

Instead, the conservation movement needs to broaden its reach, listen better and make its voice audible in places where it may not be – urban settings, inner city schools etc. We don’t need to change the message, just think more inventively and work harder about who we’re speaking to and how we can reach them (e.g. National Trust’s London Underground adverts which I think are brilliant).