Does Using Energy Cheer You Up?
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 07.17.07
Think about the reasons that you use energy. At first you might think that you consume power and goods in order to keep you alive and sustain yourself. However, humans could survive with only a small amount of locally grown food, and minimal heating. In fact, most of our energy consumption simply serves to make life better; more comfortable and more enjoyable.
Therefore, the ratio of happiness to power consumption is a useful metric to measure. It isn't the most quantifiable thing, but the New Economics Foundation (Nef) attempt just that with their Happy Planet Index (HPI). They recently published a report that measures people's opinions on how happy they are, their life expectancy and their carbon footprint in order to see if more energy usage means happier citizens. It doesn't.
Iceland wins with the highest ratio of well-being to emissions. The UK comes 21st, and it would be fascinating if the US was included. Of course, the fact that some countries have differing levels of sustainable power sources may skew the results somewhat. Nic Marks of Nef said, "countries like Iceland... demonstrate that living within our environmental means doesn't mean sacrificing human wellbeing. By learning from the differences between European countries and copying best practices, we believe it will be possible to both greatly reduce our carbon footprint and increase our wellbeing."
This is something that we have looked at before here on TreeHugger, and continues to fascinate me. Reducing the energy consumption of activities that we enjoy or need is vital, but perhaps there are large areas of consumption which aren't even improving our quality of life. Cutting these out will require more in depth thought than considering which light-bulbs to buy, it will mean a soul-searching analysis of our culture, housing, recreation and aspirations. ::BBC
This made my ears perk right up!
When you are raised in a materialistic society, the line between the planet and the person blurs quite a bit. Hence why so many people of our culture have anthropocentric views. I doubt we can be "happy" without knowing our place and accepting it, instead of fighting it. And of course, many of these endocrine-disrupting, cancer-causing chemicals and products aren't significantly affecting our physical health without taking a toll on our mental health, too.
It is true that we work too hard for things we don't really need, like the "5th car or the 10th million dollar in the bank." Which reminds me of the Simple Living movement. Does anyone recommend a particularly good read (there are DOZENS of books available), for someone who wants to get a little more involved?
--Rachel
"Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. "
(Helen Keller)
Great post - I remember a scientist on TheWatt podcast saying that individually we run at about 100 Watts, but in the US for example if you take total energy use of the country and divide by the number of people, each person apparently requires a continuous 11kW to sustain the lifestyle! That is 110 times more energy than we need to live!
All these magical white plugs in our buildings, combined with the magical invisible electricity, mean we can't even begin to appreciate how much energy we 'apparently' need.