Hey GCL, This is a very misleading survey. It measures life satisfaction and life expectancy vs ecological footprint. And the vs. part is the key. US and Western Europe have very high life satisfaction numbers, but they also cause a lot of ecological damage, driving down their "happiness" quotient for some reason. Scott Burgess tore this apart on his blog The Daily Ablution.
I guess the main thing this survey was supposed to show is that you can still be happy without a large carbon footprint. But what it also says is that the more you pollute, the higher your life satisfaction and life expectancy will be.
But this is also a good place, and an excellent topic to have the Con/Lib debate. People can be happy without damaging the planet. But economic progress brings higher life satisfaction as well as pollution. How should we balance our footprint while fulfilling our manifest need for HDTV?
I'm glad you started this blog, I'll be devil's advocating you and making sure your reasoning isn't sloppy, but I'm a GCL too with no true home.
3 comments:
Hey GCL,
This is a very misleading survey. It measures life satisfaction and life expectancy vs ecological footprint. And the vs. part is the key. US and Western Europe have very high life satisfaction numbers, but they also cause a lot of ecological damage, driving down their "happiness" quotient for some reason. Scott Burgess tore this apart on his blog The Daily Ablution.
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2006/07/yesterdays_post.html
I guess the main thing this survey was supposed to show is that you can still be happy without a large carbon footprint. But what it also says is that the more you pollute, the higher your life satisfaction and life expectancy will be.
Thanks for the input, Brytta. See, I put this out there and was hoping for more insight on this topic. Thanks again.
--GCL
But this is also a good place, and an excellent topic to have the Con/Lib debate. People can be happy without damaging the planet. But economic progress brings higher life satisfaction as well as pollution. How should we balance our footprint while fulfilling our manifest need for HDTV?
I'm glad you started this blog, I'll be devil's advocating you and making sure your reasoning isn't sloppy, but I'm a GCL too with no true home.
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