Resolving climate change hinges on humanity's happiness

Benjamin Radcliff.

Responding successfully to climate change hinges almost entirely on humanity’s general happiness.

Seemingly endless debates could rage about the meaning of happiness, what it is, what is means, and how it can be achieved, but writing on Aeon, Benjamin Radcliff distils it as a product of the welfare state.

He says that rising levels of national income do not raise the average level of happiness, since the consumption norm by which people make comparisons also increases.

“The implication is that a narrow focus on just raw economic growth is a mistake,” he writes.

Radcliff says that to survive and try to flourish within the prevailing economic system, people adopt the values and norms of the market prison which, he says, are competitive individualism, egotism, and a focus on short-term material gain.

“In practice, these values detract from a satisfying life,” he writes.

Reading Radcliff’s views it is clear that if a satisfying life and the resultant happiness brought on by the so-called and much maligned “nanny-state” will enable us to counteract climate change then we should be opting of governments that will institute a broad and comprehensive welfare state.

Read what Benjamin Radcliff said in his Aeon story - “A happy state.”