Move over Iceland!

I recently mentioned that Iceland had been deemed the happiest place on Earth, much to the dismay of Disney and their copyright attorneys. Another Happy Index takes exception, arguing that the list looks much, much different if you jettison the assumption that the contemporary Western consumerist lifestyle is the absolute pinnacle of human achievement:

The most deservedly happy place on the planet is the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, according to a radical new index published today.

>snip<

The innovative global measure of progress, the Happy Planet Index, has been constructed by the New Economics Foundation (Nef) and Friends of the Earth using three factors: life expectancy, human wellbeing and damage done via a country's "environmental footprint".

Vanuatu comes top because its people are satisfied with their lot, live to nearly 70 and do little damage to the planet. Zimbabwe takes bottom place in the table. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia, countries that have experienced recent civil upheavals, all feature in the top 10 on the grounds that they do little environmental harm and manage comparatively high levels of satisfaction with life.

The big industrial nations fare badly. The United Kingdom trails in 108th, below Libya, Gabon and Azerbaijan. The US is 150th and Russia is 172nd, near the bottom of the 178 nations for which statistics are available.

You may now commence debating arcane issues of methodology.