How Cuba Became a ‘Happy’ Country

BY MATTHEW SINCLAIR Wallstreetjournal

Citizens flee on rafts. But environmentalists know better ?

In what league does Iraq beat Britain, Haiti beat the United States, and Afghanistan beat Denmark? Political corruption? Violent crime? Temperature? No, welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the Happy Planet Index. It is a little window into the way many environmentalists think.

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) purports to “measure what matters: the extent to which countries deliver long, happy, sustainable lives for the people that live in them.” It beautifully illustrates the two great vices of environmentalist thought: fetishizing resource efficiency above everything else and treating happiness economics with far too much respect.

LET THE FIGURS SPEAK  Matthew !
On top : Costa Rica, Vietnam,…on 12 Cuba,…on 105 USA…!
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/,

The new HPI results show the extent to which 151 countries across the globe produce long, happy and sustainable lives for the people that live in them. The overall index scores rank countries based on their efficiency, how many long and happy lives each produces per unit of environmental output.

Each of the three component measures – life expectancy, experienced well-being and Ecological Footprint – is given a traffic-light score based on thresholds for good (green), middling (amber) and bad (red) performance. These scores are combined to an expanded six-colour traffic light for the overall HPI score, where, to achieve bright green – the best of the six colours, a country would have to perform well on all three individual components.

The scores for the HPI and the component measures can be viewed in map or table-form. By clicking on any individual country in the map or table you can explore its results in more detail.