Happy Planet & GDP

“By the curious standard of the GDP, the nation's economic hero is a terminal

cancer patient who is going through a costly divorce.” – (Cobb, C. et al., 1999)

            He’s probably not very happy about it though. 

            However, this is The Big Number that countries and economies, which filter down to us, rely on. We seem to be a rather competitive species, and each country wants its number to win. One of Bill Bryson’s books (I think Notes From A Big Country) mentions a study on High School students in the States, where they were asked if they’d prefer a 1% increase in economic growth, if Japan gained 1.5%, or a drop of 0.5% where Japan would drop by 1%. The large majority preferred the latter. Now that’s competitive. (I don’t have the book handy or I’d be more specific, but that’s the gist of it).

Mr. Smith up there is taking one for the team and enabling his country to stand proud with a somewhat meaningless number. It’s reflected in the financial indices used in news broadcasts. The Dow Jones is up by 0.1%, the FTSE 100 is down by 3%, the stock market dived/climbed to record lows/highs, etc. I’m not quite sure how much of the population that watches this part of the evening news understands all this (I know I don’t), but either way, we like our numbers, and the green arrow going up has got to be a positive thing, right?

            The Happy Planet Index appears to be doing much the same, appealing to our love of numbers to quantify how happy we are with our lives and how happy the planet is with us living that way. Mr Smith, our GDP hero, fares rather worse in the Happy Planet index. One of the ideas of alternative living/values in sustainable consumption/New Economics would essentially reverse these two ways of measuring current life standards in importance.

Wonder what sort of effect it would have if instead of showing the Dow and FTSE etc of an evening, newscasters broadcast the fluctuations of international Happy Planet/Carbon Footprint indices with big green and red arrows for approval/disapproval... Gathering the former might be difficult, but these numbers in competition could have an interesting effect on the worst offenders!