Happy Planet Index

The Happy Planet Index is a new global measure of progress, calculating the environmental cost with which countries deliver lives of different length and happiness, revealing for the first time that happiness doesn’t have to cost the Earth.

Launched today by nef (the new economics foundation), the Happy Planet Index is the first of its kind, and its results are surprising, or even shocking. The ranking puts the UK in 108th place and the USA in an even worse 150th out of 178 countries.

It is interesting note that the self-appointed “world leaders”, the G8, don’t rank very well at all. We’ve already seen how the UK and the USA fare, and Italy is 66th, Germany 81st, Japan 95th, Canada 111th, France 129th, and Russia 172nd.