The economics of wellbeing.

The UN Environment Programme recently announced that the world's consumer class has reached a new high of 1.7 billion--more than one of every four humans on Earth--with almost half of them residing in the developing world. While economists may celebrate this finding as a sign of economic growth, UNEP deputy director Shafqat Kakakhel warns that "It is clear that the Earth's natural ecosystems will not cope with the style of industrialization and overconsumption seen in Europe or North America." Perpetual growth in consumption will prove impossible to maintain on a planet of finite resources, even if marketers continue to spend $450 billion a year to convince us that we'll find happiness in the newest and "coolest" stuff. Perhaps it's time to start building a new system that centers not on consumption as a means to improve wellbeing, but directly on improving wellbeing itself.

Consider our consumption of cars, which are fervently desired for the personal mobility and status that they--or the ads for them--promise. They are desired despite the vast urban sprawl, excessive use of materials and gasoline, pollution, traffic congestion, and the millions of accident fatalities or injuries that car-centered development has brought. Suppose, however, that we could shift attention from the product that is now so emotionally linked to notions of free mobility, to the more objective question of how true mobility is best provided. A few cities have actually done this, and have gained large dividends for the wellbeing of their residents. Bogota, for example, invested in public transit instead of a new freeway system--and at half the cost. Its new bus system carries 700,000 people each day, far more than could afford cars, and at far less cost in terms of delays, frustration, and effects of polluted air on health.

Perhaps it would be quixotic to think the political power of the auto and oil industries could be bucked the way the tobacco industry is being bucked by the recent adoption of the Global Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. But even so, the tobacco convention suggests some bold new ways of thinking about public policy on a broad front. Raising taxes on cars and fuel to inhibiting levels, for example--and using the revenue to fund benign people-friendly urban alternatives such as bicycle lanes, car-free pedestrian zones, and public transit--might seem unthinkable to some. But if a lot of the money now spent on subsidizing and accommodating cars were redirected toward demonstrating the desirability of taking a bus, tiding a bike, or walking to work, that resistance could well begin to melt. In time, of course, a more responsible use of public funding and communications could help achieve such shifts across a wide spectrum of sectors--ultimately reshaping perceptions to define economic success in terms of increasing wellbeing, not just in terms of ever-growing material consumption.

Erik Assadourian Worldwatch Staff Researcher