I'm not saying that it doesn't matter or that no one will care. But if you think that the average American is going to stop eating meat and buy an electric car so that we have more butterflies....we know different Americans. I just think we can tell a better story about why people should care, other than "we don't know what will happen" or "butterflies are pretty" or "it took a long time to evolve this". Not saying that's all you're saying, but I see a lot of articles and comments that fail to explain why people should accept a lot of personal inconvenience right now for the sake of the biosphere someday.
"Why" falls into dangerous conversational territory in my opinion. That of feelings. You start asking why life at all? Philosophy! Crazy stuff but it can be fun.
But I don't think there are any "why"s big enough to make people accept a small amount of personal inconvenience. It just isn't in humans to operate on a macro Earth sized scale. The only way to achieve it is create the alternatives and make them more attractive than the current status quo or force the change through government regulations.
You see plenty of people helping out on one cause or another but no one can do all the things all the time. So small changes in culture are what works best. For example the local anti-smoking change which happened only recently was bolstered by the ban on indoor smoking in my city.
