Working For Jobs

Thanks to all of you who took the Gross National Happiness survey, a project of The Happiness Initiative. (And if you haven’t taken it yet, you still can!) It’s designed to measure your overall satisfaction with life as well as your sense of well-being across a number of specific categories. Do you feel good about your physical health? The educational and cultural opportunities in your community? Your work life? Your time balance? The environment where you live?

We’ve now gotten the results back for Grist readers and compared them to responses from a random sample of U.S. residents. The bottom line: You guys are a mostly happy bunch, but still a little more bummed out than the average American.

On overall life satisfaction, Grist readers scored an average 69 out of a possible 100 points, compared to 77 for average Americans. And on every specific metric but one, Grist readers lagged by 3 to 14 points.

The biggest gap, not surprisingly, was on satisfaction with the state of the environment. We can only assume that you’re better informed about environmental problems than most people, thanks to Grist, which is a good thing! But all that knowledge is bringing you down, man, which is a bad thing. Sorry. May we recommend you read some of our inspiring stories about kick-ass activists and cool green gadgets and the fast-growing renewable energy sector?

At least Grist readers are feeling slightly more comfortable about their financial status than average Americans. (Would this be a good time to hit you up for a donation?)

Hey, folks: Yeah, we’ve got some big environmental challenges, and our lives are too busy, and our governments are not up to snuff, and all that. But there’s still plenty to feel good about, and plenty you can do to cultivate and spread happiness. So crack open a beer and watch this video of an outrageously cute baby echidna. You’ll feel better afterward, we promise.

Filed under: Living

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Editor’s note: We’re encouraging Grist readers to take the Gross National Happiness survey, a project of The Happiness Initiative. Then tune back in next week to find out how your results compare to those of the Grist audience as a whole and other survey takers.

The case for happiness

It’s clear to those who’ve been paying attention that our current economic behaviors are on a collision course with the earth’s limits. We are now using resources and generating wastes at rates 40 percent higher each year than can be sustained. If every country on earth were to consume at U.S. levels, we’d need five planets.

Part of the problem is our current metric for societal success: Gross Domestic Product, or the market value of goods and services produced in a given year. The United States has the largest GDP of any country in the world, and orthodox economists would argue that our massive GDP makes the U.S. the most successful country in the world. But the facts tell a different story:

• The United States has the widest rich-poor gap of any rich nation, with the top 1 percent of earners garnering more than 20 percent of our annual income.

• Rates of poverty in the U.S. are the highest among wealthy countries, and more than double the average in Europe.

• Americans spend at least twice as much on health care per capita as citizens of any other country, yet U.S. life expectancy ranks 51st in the world.

• Americans are more likely to report experiencing stress than are people of 144 other nations.

• Americans consume nearly two-thirds of the world’s antidepressants.

• More than a third of Americans over 45 report being chronically lonely, up from 20 percent in 2000.

• The United States ranks 11th in “life satisfaction,” according to a Gallup-Healthways poll, but well below Denmark, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands.

• The United States is the only wealthy country without national policies for paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, paid holidays, and paid vacations.

Yet sadly, the American economic model is becoming more dominant, even in Europe. We are sacrificing our health, happiness, social connections, leisure time, and the environment in the blind pursuit of growth. We can’t go on like this.

Fortunately, there are some hopeful signs of change.

A new direction

In 2011, the United Nations passed a resolution recognizing that GDP “is an insufficient guide for safeguarding the well-being of people or our future.” Instead, the U.N. urged governments across the globe to start measuring happiness and well-being “with a view to guiding public policy.”

The U.N. was responding to a global trend toward replacing the singular goal of material well-being with comprehensive measures of well-being or happiness. Countries including Australia, Canada, Ireland, Japan, and the United Kingdom are now starting to measure the happiness of their citizens. These subjective studies could bring more balance to policymaking, helping us understand where people perceive themselves to be hurting and thriving.

We at The Happiness Initiative have been using a survey called the Gross National Happiness Index to measure overall life satisfaction as well as 10 “domains” of well-being. The survey was developed by a team at San Francisco State University and inspired by the government of Bhutan, which has made the happiness of its citizens its top goal since its king declared 40 years ago that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.” Here are the components of happiness we’re aiming to measure:

• Overall satisfaction with life: prevalence of positive and negative emotions

• Material well-being: income, financial security, level of debt, employment security, quality of housing

• Environment: quality of water, air, soil, forest cover, biodiversity, access to green areas and transportation

• Governance: involvement, responsibility, honesty in government

• Community vitality: relationships, sense of belonging, safety, volunteerism

• Cultural vitality: spectatorship and participation in cultural and sports events

• Education and learning: participation in formal and informal education

• Physical health: health policies and self-rated health

• Time balance: balance of time between leisure and work, enjoyment of life activities

• Psychological well-being: optimism, self-esteem, sense of competence

• Workplace experience: employment satisfaction, job conditions, productivity, compensation

Here are the average scores of more than 20,000 people who’ve taken the survey so far:

Click to embiggen.

Take 10-15 minutes to complete the survey yourself and find out how you compare to the average, and then check back next week to find out how you compare to other Grist readers.

Filed under: Living

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We know that paying attention to the news about climate and the environment is unlikely to leave you in a sunny mood. That’s as it should be. But we also know that if you let the green news get you too blue, you’ll never summon the spirit to do anything about it.

That’s why we’ve decided to make Happiness our theme of the month here at Grist for April. (And apologies for the slightly late start, but, you know, we had to get our taxes out of the way first.)

Don’t fret that we’ve gone feel-good soft; we’re not trading in our critical edge for the warm-and-fuzzies just yet. But we think that there are plenty of compelling questions to explore where the fields of “happiness studies” and sustainability overlap — at the intersection of Bliss and Green, if you will.

We started asking these questions a couple of years ago with David Roberts’ groundbreaking essay “The medium chill,” which described trading in relentless ambition for “satisficing” — “stepping off the aspirational treadmill, foregoing some material opportunities and accepting some material constraints in exchange for more time to spend on relationships and experiences.”

As part of our Happiness Month, Roberts will revisit this topic. (Although he protests that he’s already said his piece on the matter, we know that once he dives in again we’ll have to rip his digits from the keyboard to get him to move on.)

But that’s not all. Claire Thompson will reconsider the whole medium chill idea from the perspective of the millennial generation. We’ll present interviews with happiness experts like Eric Weiner (The Geography of Bliss), Dan Buettner (Blue Zones), and Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project).

And we want to involve you: We’ll post a happiness survey from the folks at the Happiness Initiative that will let us compare data from Grist readers with data from the broader population. Finally, our reporter/artist-illustrator Susie Cagle will sketch portraits of Grist readers, catching them in the act of doing the one thing they do for sustainability that makes them happy.

So stick around for the happy hours ahead! And tell us what other topics and stories in this direction you’d like to see us tackle. Read more…

Christie Aschwanden is a prolific magazine writer and author of, among other things, Beautiful Chickens, a coffee-table book packed with glam shots of champion poultry breeds. She is also the daughter of a pilot and a recovering jet setter.

As part of Grist’s March theme, “Get Small: Micro solutions to macro problems,” Ashwanden wrote about her yearlong experiment in living local. In an effort to reduce her climate footprint, she swore off air travel for 12 months and vowed to stay within a 100-mile radius of her home on a farm in western Colorado.

First World problems, for sure, but some of what she discovered was a little mind-boggling — the ability of a single plane trip to negate all of our other good green deeds, for example. Perhaps the most surprising discovery of all, however, was just how happy and content she could be living small.

“Shrinking my boundaries didn’t feel constricting — it felt liberating,” she writes. “Without travel, my life became calmer and far less stressful. After hundreds of days living in place, I felt truly grounded. It was the best year of my life, and when it was over, I had no desire to leave.”

Join Aschwanden this Thursday, March 28, at 1 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Pacific) for a live chat moderated by Grist Senior Editor Greg Hanscom. We’ll talk about the science of air travel and the climate, Ashwanden’s “100-mile habitat” experiment, and ways to find more joy in your local environs.

Thinking small? Join the conversation!

Filed under: Climate & Energy

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Climate change is a Big Problem. Moving our energy economy off fossil fuels is a Big Problem. Transforming our factory food system into something healthier? Remodeling our cities around sustainable models? Protecting our air and water? Big Problems, all.

Sometimes the sheer size of these problems can overwhelm us and leave us listless and passive. Which is one reason we’ve picked an offbeat theme for our coverage this month: Get Small — Micro Solutions to Macro Problems.

Can we steer around big obstacles by thinking differently — diminutively — about them? Can we tackle big challenges by breaking them down into smaller ones? Do massive, planetary-scale dilemmas look different at eye height?

“Small is beautiful,” sure — that idea has a proud and venerable pedigree. But “small is strong”? “Small wins”? “Small saves the planet”? These are the ideas we’re going to kick around.

For example: Did you know that there are entire species of animal that are adapting to climate change by getting smaller? We’ve got ‘em here for you!

We’ll look at what climate change looks like up really close — at the level of dust, snowflakes, and molecules.

We’ll explore — from all sides — the hypothesis that neighborhoods and local communities may be better positioned to cope with climate-driven change than nations and megalopolises.

We’ll take a look at the indomitable online popularity of tiny abodes — mini-apartments and nano-houses.

And we’re planning a contest in which you can help us come up with a better name than “shrinkage” or “downsizing” (or even “rightsizing”) for what happens when something gets smaller so it can be better.

We hope you’ll stick around and get small with us. And do add your own ideas on this theme in the comments below — but keep them, you know, brief.

Filed under: Cities, Climate & Energy, Food, Living

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We’ve made some changes on our Grist front page — in the service of a simpler, clearer, more sprightly delivery of Grist’s non-grumpy green news. We’re moving to a single, unified list of all our posts — Grist List items, Gristmill news posts, features, blog posts, columns.

Some of you have met these changes already, because we’ve been showing them, selectively, for a couple of weeks. We did something that, while increasingly the norm in the web industry, remains a little uncommon in the online journalism world: a live A/B test of our new homepage design versus the old one.

A/B testing is a kind of controlled experiment with concrete results. Thirty percent of you got the “new” Grist. The rest of you got the existing version of the site. And we looked at what happened.

What did we learn? First, judging from the absence of howls of consternation from our never shy readership, the change didn’t cause many of you to blink an eye. Second, our metrics showed that the new design actually boosted click-throughs from the homepage to story pages by enough percentage points to make a significant difference.

Of course, if you’re reading Grist on your phone, as we know more and more of you are doing, then this is how you’ve been seeing our stories for some time. The mobile theme for our site (what you see if you visit Grist on your phone’s browser) shows all our posts in a single stream. We know this works well because, hey, we read on our phones, too.

We know, too, that the homepage itself is the point of entry for a diminishing fraction of visitors to Grist. More commonly, now, you arrive on wings of Twitter or thumbs of Facebook, alight on a story or two, and flutter off. Such readers — and indeed all our visitors — are still only a click away from the complete Grist List and Gristmill pages; topics like Climate and Energy, Food, and Cities; and regulars like David Roberts and Ask Umbra.

Nothing in the world of digital publishing stands still for very long. So don’t be surprised if you keep noticing little things changing around here — we’re probably testing another new tweak. And of course let us know what you think: in comments below, here or anywhere, or via email. Thanks!

Filed under: Article

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Each year at this time, Grist’s writers and editors walk, hats in hand, to the people who keep track of the traffic numbers here. Each year, we hope against hope that one of our stories has made the list of the top-10 most clicked stories on the site — maybe it’ll be that wonky piece about what the Census numbers tell us (and don’t) about the so-called “urban renaissance,” or the one about “discount rates” and climate change. Oh come on, we can hope, can’t we?

OK, no. We’ve had our fun over the past week hand-picking our favorite stories about bikes, genius kids, cities, and the likes. But this last list is drawn straight from the data, based solely on the number of “unique pageviews” each story received. And let’s just say it doesn’t always leave us feeling optimistic about the future of life on this rock.

Without further ado, the 10 most popular stories from Grist in 2012. If you need us, we’ll be huddled around a bottle of whiskey, resigning ourselves to running more stories about baby pandas and penguin sweaters in 2013 — and toasting Jess Zimmerman and her crack team of Grist List bloggers who keep the hordes stampeding to our url, despite our best efforts to drive them away.

10. House Republican accidentally tells truth about Solyndra investigation

Wow. Can’t really explain this one. I mean, this was actually news — at least inasmuch as a story about non-news can be news. (You’ll recall that the Solyndra investigation was cooked up by Republicans to tar renewable energy and President Obama’s economic recovery efforts in general.) But the web-surfing public went for it, big time. Go figure.

9. Woman arrested for burning down 3,500-year-old tree

Pro tip: If you’re going to do meth inside a giant tree and then light the thing on fire, don’t take pictures of the conflagration and leave them lying around where the cops can find them. There may be a happy ending to this story, however: The Orlando Sentinel reports that University of Florida foresters produced clones of the tree, called the Senator, 15 years before it burned. Plans are afoot to plant one of the clones in the park where the Senator once stood. If all goes well, everything will be back to normal in about 3,485 years.

8. Watch rescued ducks discover the water for the first time in this heartwarming video

Here’s another gem from the messed-up-people-vs.-the-planet department — this time a story about 160 ducks rescued from a hoarder who kept them in some pretty horrid conditions. Turns out that not all ducks take to water like, well … oh, just watch it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, etc., etc.

7. Here is a shark swallowing another shark

Nuf said.

6. If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month

This little statistic apparently left the interwebs agog: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature.” In other words, if you were born in or after April 1985, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. Um, is it getting hot in here?

5. $28 cabbage, $65 chicken, and other insane food prices in Northern Canada

Another sign of how completely super cool Canada is: The Inuit have their own freaking province. Now if they could only afford food. This story may only be the fifth most clicked story of 2012, but it contains, hands down, the best (worst) pun of the year.

4. 9-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

Yeah, so some 9-year-old decides to start a blog about the crap she’s served in the school cafeteria, and she gets all kinds of international attention, including from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, and as a result, the school starts feeding the kids actual food. Big whoop! We have a blog, too. Where’s the love?

3. The most brutal ad you’ll see this election

It stands to reason that the shortest post Grist’s staff writer, David Roberts, wrote all year got the most traffic. His  subject: a bruiser of an ad that features scenes of superstorm Sandy ravaging the Eastern Seaboard, set to Mitt Romney’s wisecrack about climate change at the Republican National Convention and the raucous applause that followed. The sum total of Roberts’ commentary: “Ouch.”

2. America has 40 million McMansions that no one wants

OK, we’ll admit it. That’s a hell of a headline.

1. Giant, awesome tree lobster survived 80 years in hiding

The f*&%^ing tree lobster! This thing is the bane of our existence. You let down your guard for like FIVE MINUTES and the tree lobster is back at the top of the traffic charts — and indeed, it’s tops for 2012. But wait, oh god, that thing is AMAZING, really. Here’s how Sarah Laskow sums up its story:

A giant, awesome bug that looks like an alien almost didn’t survive because people are idiots (and rats are jerks). But it did, because sometimes people aren’t total idiots and are a little bit brave. And now you can watch how awesome this bug is on the internet.

So OK, we’ll let this pass just once, tree lobster. But mark our words: We won’t let you do this to us again next year. Next year it’s gonna be, well … would somebody pass the whiskey?

Filed under: Article

View full post on Grist

Each year at this time, Grist’s writers and editors walk, hats in hand, to the people who keep track of the traffic numbers here. Each year, we hope against hope that one of our stories has made the list of the top-10 most clicked stories on the site — maybe it’ll be that wonky piece about what the Census numbers tell us (and don’t) about the so-called “urban renaissance,” or the one about “discount rates” and climate change. Oh come on, we can hope, can’t we?

OK, no. We’ve had our fun over the past week hand-picking our favorite stories about bikes, genius kids, cities, and the likes. But this last list is drawn straight from the data, based solely on the number of “unique pageviews” each story received. And let’s just say it doesn’t always leave us feeling optimistic about the future of life on this rock.

Without further ado, the 10 most popular stories from Grist in 2012. If you need us, we’ll be huddled around a bottle of whiskey, resigning ourselves to running more stories about baby pandas and penguin sweaters in 2013 — and toasting Jess Zimmerman and her crack team of Grist List bloggers who keep the hordes stampeding to our url, despite our best efforts to drive them away.

10. House Republican accidentally tells truth about Solyndra investigation

Wow. Can’t really explain this one. I mean, this was actually news — at least inasmuch as a story about non-news can be news. (You’ll recall that the Solyndra investigation was cooked up by Republicans to tar renewable energy and President Obama’s economic recovery efforts in general.) But the web-surfing public went for it, big time. Go figure.

9. Woman arrested for burning down 3,500-year-old tree

Pro tip: If you’re going to do meth inside a giant tree and then light the thing on fire, don’t take pictures of the conflagration and leave them lying around where the cops can find them. There may be a happy ending to this story, however: The Orlando Sentinel reports that University of Florida foresters produced clones of the tree, called the Senator, 15 years before it burned. Plans are afoot to plant one of the clones in the park where the Senator once stood. If all goes well, everything will be back to normal in about 3,485 years.

8. Watch rescued ducks discover the water for the first time in this heartwarming video

Here’s another gem from the messed-up-people-vs.-the-planet department — this time a story about 160 ducks rescued from a hoarder who kept them in some pretty horrid conditions. Turns out that not all ducks take to water like, well … oh, just watch it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, etc., etc.

7. Here is a shark swallowing another shark

Nuf said.

6. If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month

This little statistic apparently left the interwebs agog: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature.” In other words, if you were born in or after April 1985, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. Um, is it getting hot in here?

5. $28 cabbage, $65 chicken, and other insane food prices in Northern Canada

Another sign of how completely super cool Canada is: The Inuit have their own freaking province. Now if they could only afford food. This story may only be the fifth most clicked story of 2012, but it contains, hands down, the best (worst) pun of the year.

4. 9-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

Yeah, so some 9-year-old decides to start a blog about the crap she’s served in the school cafeteria, and she gets all kinds of international attention, including from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, and as a result, the school starts feeding the kids actual food. Big whoop! We have a blog, too. Where’s the love?

3. The most brutal ad you’ll see this election

It stands to reason that the shortest post Grist’s staff writer, David Roberts, wrote all year got the most traffic. His  subject: a bruiser of an ad that features scenes of superstorm Sandy ravaging the Eastern Seaboard, set to Mitt Romney’s wisecrack about climate change at the Republican National Convention and the raucous applause that followed. The sum total of Roberts’ commentary: “Ouch.”

2. America has 40 million McMansions that no one wants

OK, we’ll admit it. That’s a hell of a headline.

1. Giant, awesome tree lobster survived 80 years in hiding

The f*&%^ing tree lobster! This thing is the bane of our existence. You let down your guard for like FIVE MINUTES and the tree lobster is back at the top of the traffic charts — and indeed, it’s tops for 2012. But wait, oh god, that thing is AMAZING, really. Here’s how Sarah Laskow sums up its story:

A giant, awesome bug that looks like an alien almost didn’t survive because people are idiots (and rats are jerks). But it did, because sometimes people aren’t total idiots and are a little bit brave. And now you can watch how awesome this bug is on the internet.

So OK, we’ll let this pass just once, tree lobster. But mark our words: We won’t let you do this to us again next year. Next year it’s gonna be, well … would somebody pass the whiskey?

Filed under: Article

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Grist readers,

Can you imagine Austin Powers without his Shaguar? Or Maxwell Smart without the shoe phone? Grist can’t go far without the right tech tools, either.

Your donation — as little as $5 — will help Grist stay on the cutting edge.

We have just 12 more days to outwit the nasty eco-villains threatening to tamper with our green news machine. And your support won’t just thwart foes and give a boost to our clever journalists. You will make it possible for developers like me to keep Grist running smoothly. You won’t see us at work — most of our missions take place in a secret bunker — but we’re the great brains behind this operation, and we’re the reason you get your green news where you want it, when you want it. Instant gratification at its finest!

So give us a bit or a byte — and speaking of gadgets, if you make a donation of $50 or more, you could score a Nest learning thermostat! And your $50-plus gift will be matched by a generous supporter.

Grist readers, we have just two weeks to make sure these evil-doers experience a critical failure. Make a donation today to help us reach our goal of 2,500 donations by Dec. 11.

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Quartermaster and Web Developer

P.S. Did we mention that gifts of $50 or more will be matched by a generous, anonymous ally?

P.P.S. Rather not give online? You’re also welcome to send a check: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

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Hello, Grist readers.

We have two weeks to thwart an evil plan.

Would you give just five bucks to bulwark Grist’s indispensable green news against a villainous threat?

James Bond had Goldfinger. Maxwell Smart had KAOS. Inspector Gadget had Dr. Claw. At Grist, our evil nemesis is a whole coven of dark forces intent on wrecking the climate, from fiendish oil-lovin’ billionaires to crooked coal-beholden politicians. Luckily, the Grist Agency is committed to fending them off with a whole lotta smarts — and a dash of style.

Every day, we reveal all the crucial information you need to navigate this ever-changing world we live in. But it takes more than just a goldeneye for great stories to create a brighter planetary future. It takes some shekels, too. So please, parachute in some dollars, pounds, whatever you got.

Grist readers, these climate-crushing villains are threatening to “send us a message” by dismantling the Grist irrev-o-blaster — the device that dispatches our irreverent green news to millions — and we have just two weeks to stop them. Make a donation today to help us reach our goal of 2,500 donations by Dec. 11 so we can foil their plot and pursue our ultimate mission: you know, saving the planet.

Covertly,
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P.S. Gifts of $50 or more will be matched by a generous, anonymous ally.

P.P.S. Rather not give online? You’re also welcome to send a check: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

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