did not say
when he inspired the civil rights
he said i have a dream
and this is going to be a challenge
because if you think of every major blockbusting film of recent times
nearly all of its visions for humanity are apocalyptic
i think this film is one of the hardest watches of modern times the road
it's a beautiful piece of filmmaking but everything is desolate
and just a father and son
trying to survive
and i think the environmental movement of which i am a
we have peddled a nightmarish vision of what's going to
we have focused on the worst case scenario
we have focused on the problems and we have not thought enough about the solutions
used fear if you like to grab people 's attention
and any psychologist will tell you
in the organism is linked to flightmechanism it's part of the fight and flight mechanism
a deer a deer freezes very very still
poised to run away
asking people to engage with our agenda around environmental degradation and climate change people are freezing and running away
because we're using fear
and i think the environmental movement has to grow up
and start to think about what progress is what would it be like to be improving the human lot
and one of the problems that we face i think is that the only people that have cornered the market in terms of progress
is a financialdefinition of what progress is an economic definition of what progress is that somehow if we get the right numbers to go up
economic growth that somehow life is going to get better
this is somehow appealing to human greed instead of fear that more is better come on
in the western world we have enough
and we've know for a long time that this is not a good measure of the welfare of nations in fact the architect of our national accounting system simon kuznets in the nineteen thirties said that
a nation 's welfare can scarcely be inferred from their national income
but we've created a national accounting system which is firmly based on production and producing stuff and indeed this is probably historical and it had its time
in the second world war we needed to produce a lot of stuff and indeed we were so successful at producing certain types of stuff that we destroyed a lot of europe and we had to rebuild it afterwards
this visionary man robert kennedy at the start of his ill fated presidentialcampaign gave the most eloquent deconstruction
of gross national product that ever has been and he finished his talk with the phrase that the gross national product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile
how crazy is that that our measure of progress our dominantmeasure of progress in society is measuring everything except that
which makes life worthwhile
i believe if kennedy was alive today
be asking statisticians such as myself to go out and find out
what makes life worthwhile he'd be asking us to redesign our national accounting system to be based upon
such important things as social justice sustainability and people 's well being
and actually social scientists have already gone out and asked these questions around the world
and unsurprisingly people all around the world
that what they want is happiness for themselves for their families their children their communities okay they think money is slightly important it's there
we all need to love and be loved in life it's not nearly as important as health
we want to be healthy and live a full life these seem to be natural human aspirations
why are statisticians not measuring these why are we not thinking of the progress of nations in these terms instead of just how much stuff we have
we created at the organization that i work for the new economicsfoundation something we call the happy planet index because we think people should be happy and the planet should be happy why don't we create a measure of progress that shows that
and what we do is we say that the ultimateoutcome of a nation is how successful is it at creating happy and healthy lives for its citizens that should be the goal of every nation on the planet but we have to remember
that there's a fundamental input to that
and that is how many of the planet 's resources we use
we all have one planet we all have to share it it is the ultimatescarceresource the one planet that we share and economics is very interested in scarcity
when it has a scarceresource that it wants to turn into a desirableoutcome it thinks in terms of efficiency it thinks in terms of how much bang do we get for our buck
and this is a measure of how much well being we get for our planetary resource use it is an efficiencymeasure and probably the easiest way to show you
is to show you this graph
running horizontally along the
running vertically upwards is a measure called happy life years it's about the well being of nations it's like a happiness adjusted life expectancy
it's like quality and quantity of life in nations and the yellow dot there you see is the global average now there's a huge array of nations around that global average to the top right of the graph
in hobbesian terms life is short and brutish there the average life expectancy in many of these countries is only forty years
malaria hiv aids are killing a lot of people in these regions of the world
but now for the good news there are some countries up there yellow triangles that are doing better than global average that are heading up towards the top left of the graph
this is an aspirational graph we want to be top left where good lives don't cost the earth they're latin american the country on its own up at the top
a place i haven't been to maybe some of you have
they are according to the latest gallup world poll the happiest nation on the planet
anybody more than switzerland and
programs health and education they have one of the highest literacy rates in latin america and in the world
latin vibe don't they they have the social connectedness
and the challenge really is to pull the global average up here
that's what we need to do and if we're going to do that we need to pull countries from the bottom and we need to pull countries from the right of the graph
and then we're starting to create
and this is the trend in well being over that time a small increase but this is the trend in ecological footprint
actually not very long away it's half a human lifetime away a child entering school today will be my age in two thousand and fifty this is not the very distant future
this is what the u k government target on carbon and greenhouse emissions looks like
and i put it to you that
not business as usual
that is changing our business that is changing the way we
we do our government policy and we live our lives
we need to carry on increasing well being no one can go to the polls and say that quality of life is going to reduce none of us i think want human progress to
i think we want it to carry on i think we want the lot of humanity to keep on increasing and i think this is where climate change skeptics and deniers come in i think this is what they want they want quality of life to keep increasing
they want to hold on to what they've got and if we're going to engage them i think that's what we've got to do
and that means we have to really increase efficiency even more now that's all very easy to draw graphs and things like that but the point is we need to turn those curves
and this is where i think we can take a leaf out of systems theory systems engineers where they create feedback loops put the right information at the right point of time human beings are very motivated by the now
you put a smart meter in your home and you see how much electricity you're using right now how much it's costing you your kids go around and turn the lights off pretty quickly what would that look like for society
and why do i hear that why don't i hear how much energy britain used yesterday or american used yesterday
did we meet our three percent annual target on reducing carbon emissions that's how you create a collective goal you put it out there into the media and start thinking about it and we need positive feedback loops
for increasing well being
at a government level they might create national accounts of well being at a business level you might look at the well being of your employees which we know is really linked to creativity which is linked to innovation
a lot of innovation to deal with those environmental issues at a personal level we need these nudges too
in the u k we have a strong public health message on five fruit and vegetables a day and how much exercise we should do never my best thing
what are these for happiness
what are the five things that you should do every day to be
piece of work we did was on what five positive actions can you do to improve well being in your life and the point of these is they are
not quite the secrets of happiness but they are things that i think happiness will flow out the side from and the first of these is to connect
is that your social relationships are the most important cornerstones of your life do you invest the time with your loved ones that you could do and energy keep building them
the second one is be active the fastest way out of a bad mood step outside go for a walk turn the radio on and
how aware are you of things going on around the world the seasons changing people around you do you notice what's bubbling up for you and trying to emerge
based on a lot of evidence for mindfulness cognitive behavioral therapy strong for our well being
the fourth is keep learning
and keep is important learning throughout the whole life course older people who keep learning and are curious
they have much better health outcomes than those who start to close down but it doesn't have to be formallearning it's not knowledge based it's more curiosity it can be learning to cook a new dish
keep learning and the final one is that most anti economic of activities but give
our generosity our altruism our compassion are all hardwired to the rewardmechanism in our brain we feel good if we give
you can do an experiment where you give two groups of people a hundred dollars in the morning you tell one of them to spend it on themselves and one on other people
you measure their happiness at the end of the day those that have gone and spent on other people are much happier that those that spent it on themselves and these five ways which we put onto these handy postcards
i would say don't have to cost the earth they don't have any carbon content they don't need a lot of material goods to be satisfied and so i think it's really quite feasible that happiness does not cost the earth
on the eve of his death gave an incredible speech
he said i know there are challenges ahead there may be trouble ahead
but i fear no one i don't care i have been to the mountain top and i have seen the promised land
he was a preacher but i believe the environmental movement and in fact the business community government needs to go to the top of the mountain top
and it needs to look out and it needs to see the promised land or the land of promise and it needs to have a vision of a world that we all want
and not only that we need to create a great transition to get there and we need to pave that great transition with good things human beings
want to be happy pave them with the five ways and we need to have signposts gathering people together and pointing them something like the happy planet index and then i believe
that we can all create a world we all want
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