At personal level, people are faced with a choice between satisfying their immediate needs with the prospect of negative future consequences to the society, and restricting their present consumption for the further good of the community. The way people resolve this dilemma has important implications.

Changing human behaviour to act in pro-environmentally friendly ways will require various methods because reasoning alone may not influence or motivate people to modify their behaviours. Thus, this section addresses the use of education and other reinforcement-related techniques as potential means of encouraging people to adopt practices will that benefit all humans as well as other species.