[Toro]

As if that were possible.

There are many environmental groups who do good work.

Then there are bizarre groups like Friends of the Earth.

Here is their list of the Happiest Countries on Earth

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/list.htm

Vanuatu 1st
El Salvador 9th
Vietnam 12th
Nicaragua 18th
Kyrgyzstan 19th
Tajikistan 25th
Yemen 35th
Palestine 45th
Mongolia 56th
Ghana 68th
Bolivia 69th
Burma 77th
Lebanon 83rd
Saudi Arabia 89th
Cambodia 91st
Laos 109th
Benin 110th

Canada 111th

Pakistan 112th
Sweden 119th (Even do-gooder Sweden doesn't rate amongst the granola set.)
Mauritania 124th
Togo 126th

USA 150th

Zimbabwe 178th (last)

If Palestine is happier than Canada, I guess they don't need their own nation after all. Good, that settles all the problems in the Middle East. Glad we got that sorted out.

This is how it is defined

Quote:

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered.

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/introduction.htm

I guess that explains the flood of Americans immigrating to the likes of Yemen and Benin.

What it explains

Quote:

It is important to recognise from the outset that the HPI is not an indicator of the happiest country on the planet, or the best place to live. Nor does it indicate the most developed country in the traditional sense, or the most environmentally friendly. Instead, the HPI combines these notions, providing a method of comparing countries’ progress towards the goal of providing long-term well-being for all without exceeding the limits of equitable resource consumption.

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/reveal2.htm

And they wonder why they're not taken seriously by people in power.

[Wullu]

I wonder if these wondurkind noticed that all the countrys near or at the top of their list have abject poverty and rank amoung the highest percentages of malnutrition. Probably. Of course the horned frog counts for more with them then real live human beings.

[Hardy]

Toro wrote:

Here is their list of the Happiest Countries on Earth

No, it isn't. If you want the happiest people, you can just look at the left column (satisfaction) and ignore the others, which gives a completely different result.

The "environmental footprint" column is the only part of it which differs from other lists like this which various organizations have done. This transforms the whole thing from an overall happiness & wellbeing study to an efficiency study: who keeps people happiest for the amount of resources they consume. Which is an interesting idea. But they fail to come up with any trend which shows WHY the results are as they are, which makes it not very useful -- there's no lesson, no route to improving efficiency.

Something which I learned in a sociology class back before disco was dead, was that people tend to be happy when they are doing about as well as their neighbours, assuming that their neighbours aren't starving refugees. So you look at a country like Cuba, where almost everyone is poor, but where they have nationalized healthcare (giving them a high life expectancy), and you end up with a top-10 score in this study. Barring a major war, plague or other disaster, an egalitarian but poor society with freely available health care will always have a very high score.

And that's where this study falls down. It fails to note something which anybody who took even one soc class in the last 50 years should know -- that, all else being equal, people who make $20,000 a year in a $50,000 a year society will be less happy than those who make $3000 in a $2000 a year society. If you know that, then you already know more than their study can tell you.

[Bodah]

I checked the list, India is 62nd .

Dont they still have the plague ?

[Scape]

Hardy wrote:

And that's where this study falls down. It fails to note something which anybody who took even one soc class in the last 50 years should know -- that, all else being equal, people who make $20,000 a year in a $50,000 a year society will be less happy than those who make $3000 in a $2000 a year society. If you know that, then you already know more than their study can tell you.

Knocks it out of the ballpark.

[Hardy]

Bodah wrote:

I checked the list, India is 62nd .
Dont they still have the plague ?

They had a minor plague problem in '94, but none since. Just the same, their HIV infection rate is bound to drag them down for the forseeable future. And feuding with Pakistan might do a lot worse then that.