IKN

The name is enough to get those “here we go again” sounds come from your inner second personality that whispers in your ear all the time (you don’t have one of them?…try it…it’s fun), but “The Happy Planet Index 2009” has just been published by a bunch of people that wear hemp sandals in London called The New Economics Foundation.

So this Happy Planet Index takes things like life expectancy, ecological footprint (it was in that Al Gore movie…remember?) and other things like being poor is fashionable…probably. And as it turns out, Latin America seriously but seriously whups the world’s tush, with nine of the top ten places (143 countries surveyed) taken by the region…damn, we rule.

(click to enlarge)

Here above are the LatAm countries in their entirety as placed by the these so-called hippy people with the lower the score the better (e.g. Uruguay sucks). As well as tippy top top placed Costa Rica, Central America and the Caribbean scores well. In continental South America, Colombia and Brazil make the top ten, which must be the only time Colombia wins in a world poll that doesn’t involve death, cocaine or both.

And if you’re wondering, The UK 74th place, Canada 89th place, The USA 114th place. So you all suck. So there. In fact the best placed “western nations” (reminds me of ‘3:10 to Yuma’ that we watched last night….pretty good movie, BTW) is The Netherlands, squeaking in at position 43. Find all the downloads here (the XLS file is the most fun).

So remember folks, money doesn’t buy you happiness but it does buy you the computer equipment to create stupid polls while sitting in an office in the most expensive real estate area in the whole world, publish them and then read them online. I’m now likely to receive a stuffy mail from the authors of the report because one thing treehuggers always seem to lack is a sense of humour. Lentilburgers served.

UPDATE (from reader ‘PP’)
Question: How do you confuse an ecologist?
Answer: Ask where the nickel in his Prius batteries came from.